Urban policy (im)mobilities and refractory policy lessons: experimenting with the sustainability fix

Abstract

This paper bridges scholarship on policy mobilities and urban climate change experimentation to analyze the ways in which innovative low-carbon policies fail to diffuse. It argues that urban experiments become strategic learning tools that allow dominant actors in urban environmental politics to map pathways for a sustainability fix, test new low-carbon interventions, and gain knowledge of pathways for growth. Through a case-study of a solar district heating demonstration project in the Calgary metropolitan region, we suggest that these experiments allow powerful actors to mobilze “perverse policy lessons” in order to construct “policy failures” in cases that do not meet their requirements for a sustainability fix. Our analysis elucidates material and discursive strategies mobilised by dominant actors to selectively circulate knowledge that defines an urban experiment’s success or failure. We highlight two takeaways for future scholarship on urban environmental governance and policy mobilities.