Compact urbanism for climate adaptation in Small Island Nations: a scenario-based comparative study of public and expert perspectives

Small Island Nations face unique spatial and climatic challenges, yet the adaptive potential of compact urbanism in these settings remains underexplored. This study examines how compact urbanism can function as a climate adaptation strategy through a two-stage scenario evaluation model that positions perception as a critical mediator between urban form and adaptive capacity. Four AI-assisted spatial futures, ranging from dispersed to high-performance compact forms, were assessed through a national survey in Singapore (n = 400) and subsequently interpreted by expert panels in Bahrain (n = 23). Singaporean respondents consistently rejected dispersed urbanism, instead identifying three viable compact pathways shaped less by density itself than by microclimate quality, greenery, mobility coherence, and spatial familiarity. Bahraini experts reinterpreted these preferences through local climatic, institutional, and socio-cultural conditions, revealing that compactness becomes “conditioned rather than preferred,” feasible only when aligned with privacy norms, governance capacity, and incremental retrofit logic. The study reframes compact urbanism as a context-dependent adaptation strategy and demonstrates how perception and institutional conditions mediate its feasibility across contrasting island systems. It further introduces a transferable evaluation approach linking public and expert perspectives, while highlighting the need for calibration to local cultural, climatic, and governance contexts.