Promises and Concerns of the Urban Century

Abstract

In sum, it is now evident that urban responses to climate change involve a diverse range of actors as well as forms of agency that cross traditional boundaries, and which have diverse consequences for (dis)empowering different social groups – helping or hampering them to increase their well-being. Friction between novel forms of agency, new agents of change and (dis)empowerment is a missing focus in existing scholarship on urban climate futures. This edited book addresses this knowledge gap and raises important issues for how we understand urban climate responses. It does so by drawing together insights from a wide range of countries, spanning the Global North to the Global South. The book is unique in its ambition and reach. It brings together 11 chapters by renowned urban climate governance scholars from around the globe. These chapters all critically assess the promises and limitations of increasing agency in urban climate governance. They build on solid empirical knowledge gained from case studies in the Global North and Global South. In doing so it sheds a much-needed critical new light on the existing literature and advances the current state of knowledge on urban climate policy and governance. In this chapter, we begin with setting out the key themes of the book – the politics of urban futures, increasing agency in urban climate policy and governance, and contested empowerment in urban transformations. We discuss some of the puzzles they raise for policy, practice, and academia, and propose a critical analysis of the heterogeneous forms of agency shaping the politics of urban futures. From here on, we briefly introduce the chapters that make up the main body of this book and how they relate to the broader ESG scholarship and other relevant communities and work in the field.