Climate Resilient Strategies for Transit Systems A Policy Assemblage Still Far from Adaptative Planning

Rail transit systems are suffering from recurrent disruptions caused, directly or indirectly, by heat waves. How may such a threat be turned into an opportunity and help to shape resilient intermodal hubs and the advent of planning climate resilience? Drawing on a case study of France’s Côte d’Azur transit service and infrastructure, the paper questions the linkages between current possibilities of coping with heat threats and the future integration of such capacities into climate adaptative planning. The results show (1) that different forms of resilience and adaptation coexist and develop as transmitted-risk processes (fixing one perturbation generates a disruption in another part of the system); and (2) that transit service deterioration is already being taken into account in regulation, infrastructural planning, and urban-regional planning. The article thus contributes to the theoretical debate on the role and meaning of climate resilience in planning studies as it provides a typology of resilience models, a critical assessment of their policy assemblage, and a broader reflection on their scalar integration that can be tested and transferred to other contexts.