Abstract
Climate change adaptation and mitigation have become key policy drivers in the UK under its Climate Change Act of 2008. At the same time, urbanization has been high on the agenda, given the pressing need for substantial additional housing, particularly in southeast England. These twin policy objectives were brought together in the UK government’s ‘eco-town’ initiative for England launched in 2007, which has since resulted in four eco-town projects currently under development. We critically analyze the eco-town initiative’s policy evolution and early planning phase from a multilevel governance perspective by focusing on the following two interrelated aspects: (1) the evolving governance structures and resulting dynamics arising from the development of the eco-town initiative at UK governmental level, and the subsequent partial devolution to local stakeholders, including local authorities and nongovernmental actors, under the new ‘localism’ agenda; and (2) the effect of these governance dynamics on the conceptual and practical approach to adaptation through the emerging eco-town projects. As such, we problematize the impact of multilevel governance relations, and competing governance strategies and leadership, on shaping eco-town and related adaptation strategies and practice.
Highlights
The English eco-town initiative was launched by the UK Labour government in 2007 to address the twin challenges of growing urbanization and climate change
We critically analyze the eco-town initiative’s policy evolution and early planning phase from a multilevel governance perspective by focusing on the following two interrelated aspects: (1) the evolving governance structures and resulting dynamics arising from the development of the eco-town initiative at UK governmental level, and the subsequent partial devolution to local stakeholders, including local authorities and nongovernmental actors, under the new ‘localism’ agenda; and (2) the effect of these governance dynamics on the conceptual and practical approach to adaptation through the emerging eco-town projects
As a case of adaptation for climate change, the English eco-town initiative provides useful insights into the framing of policy discourse, the delivery mechanisms and related policy dynamics, and the conceptual tensions resulting from complex multilevel governance processes
Summary
Adaptation has been an integral part of the initiative, with both general references to “climate change resilience” and specific climate change adaptation elements, such as sea level rise and flood risk management, built into the policy (Communities and Local Government 2009) These adaptation features have to be understood as running alongside other criteria, including climate mitigation and, arguably most dominant, socioeconomic sustainability features, that together form the ecotown initiative. Adaptation is, subsumed within an overall broader policy frame This partly reflects the conceptualization of climate change, at the time of the initiative’s launch, in British policy concurrently in terms of mitigation and adaptation; as the national Planning Policy Statement: Planning and Climate Change clearly stated, “mitigation and adaptation should not be considered independently of each other, and new development should be planned with both in mind” (Communities and Local Government 2007a:11). Of particular interest are what governance mode, including a designed national planning policy to guide local implementation, and horizontal and vertical governance action levels, involving several governmental agencies, local authorities, and nongovernmental bodies, have been at work, and how these have coproduced the eco-town initiative
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