Abstract
Despite an appreciation for the role of cities in addressing global climate change, more studies are needed that explore how climate change policies relate to cities’ everyday governing concerns. Such insights are critical for understanding how climate change policy will expand, play out, and evolve as it moves from experimental efforts in particularly innovative cities to the majority of cities. This study addresses these needs using 32 interviews and over 200 survey responses from smaller cities (populations under 100,000) in the American rust belt. In the interviews comparing cities’ financial concerns, economic development considerations, and how other cities influence them, a distinctive mindset amongst cities highly engaged with climate change emerged. Highly engaged cities were those pursuing socioeconomic reinvention, informed by efforts to identify and apply policy ideas from a wide range of other cities across the United States and internationally. Results of the regression analyses supported the notion that financial concerns, economic development considerations, and the influence of other cities shape decisions about climate change policy in these cities. However, they also highlighted the complexity of these issues and that the role these factors had in shaping climate change policy will likely continue to evolve as these policies continue to diffuse to more places.
Highlights
Cities are currently critical niches for the development of climate change policies [1,2]
According to the interviews, compared with cities where climate change was having no influence on policy actions, cities that were highly engaged with climate change were places that were more likely to be focused on managing expenditures than revenue and were compelled to pursue economic development innovations that would move the city beyond the industrial past of the rust belt region
This study used 32 interviews and over 200 survey responses to explore ways in which the logic of political economic rationalism shapes whether or not smaller cities are highly engaged with climate change policy
Summary
Cities are currently critical niches for the development of climate change policies [1,2]. The continued development of social scientific theories of local climate change politics and governance requires cultivating a deeper understanding of the local political and governing processes that drive the emergence of these efforts [3]. Many studies have identified factors associated with local governments pursuing climate change mitigation and adaptation [4,5,6]. The level of insight it has been able to provide related to the specificities of how climate change governance plays out in individual contexts and the extent to which necessary deeper social changes are occurring in these contexts has been limited [7]. More attention is needed regarding how climate change policy efforts relate to local governments’ mundane, everyday activities to gain a better perspective on how climate change policy relates to cultural and socioeconomic change [7]
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