Urban Governance and the Politics of Climate change

Abstract

Cities and urban areas are increasingly recognized as strategic arenas for climate change action. Processes of urban governance addressing climate change reconfigure the politics of climate change. Practitioners and scholars may be interested in the transformation of urban governance that follows global advances in climate change and urban policy. They may specifically be interested in how the urban governance of climate change is achieved and with what consequences for international development. This review evaluates the deep changes in urban governance that follow attempts to address climate change and how, in turn, attempts to govern climate change in urban areas reconfigure discourses informing the politics of climate change. The review shows that efforts to institutionalize climate change governance in urban areas reflect the conditions of specific contexts; that cities and sub-national entities have gained traction in international climate policy through heterogeneous forms of network governance; that governing climate change in urban areas relates to the production and deployment of new climate rationalities, or governmentalities; and that governing experiences in cities are reconfiguring discourses of climate change governance toward an increasing emphasis on experimentation as a means to deal with the open ended processes of governing urban areas.