Due to climate change, many European cities expect to experience a significant increase in heat stress. There is a need to visualize the scope of the assignment, but especially to pragmatically fill in and link solutions. The Interreg 2 sea project Cool Towns offers the opportunity to cooperate with other cities that have to deal with similar challenges, to learn from each other and to find solutions together to make the cities liveable in the future. This adaptation to climate change needs long term planning and commitment from many stakeholders. Heat resilience thinking needs to be integrated in all strategies and decision making with spatial relevance. Developing, testing and implementing business cases is one of the key elements of the project. It shows urban planners and decision makers how and where measures can be applied effectively and provides insight in costs, resources, maintenance and life cycle planning.
