Urban Climate Governance Research Articles

Opportunities and challenges for urban climate governance

Opportunities and challenges for urban climate governance

The diverse cities of global urban climate governance

AbstractGlobal politics has shown increasing interest in cities, particularly in the field of climate policy and governance. Yet, we still have little understanding of which cities engage the most in global urban climate governance. Answering this question is a first step towards understanding who decides for whom in a system that has decisive influence on wider global policy processes. In this article, we seek to identify and analyse the characteristics and position of cities in global urban climate governance to reassess its composition. To do so, we conduct a social network analysis of 15 transnational city networks. Results emphasise that global and large cities are the most central, but small and middle‐size cities are the most numerous actors of the system. Global South cities are larger than their Northern counterparts in the system. Those less central and understudied actors likely have less influence over which norms are shared, yet they should not be seen as followers or imitators of climate policy. It is important to pay more attention to them to understand their multifaceted role in cities' collective efforts to address climate change.

Understanding the science-policy interface in urban climate governance from a co-production perspective: Insights from the cases of Hamburg and São Paulo

Urban governance, the interplay of governmental bodies with other actors shaping decision-making and its implementation, plays a key role for mitigation and adaptation measures in cities. While knowledge co-production is advanced as an instrumental approach to support climate action, a gap between knowledge and implementation persists. The objective of the article is to better understand the complex nature of urban climate governance with which science – through data and people – is expected to interplay with. We introduce a framework, based on the analytical lens of co-production, to unpack the entanglements of rules and norms, interests and visions, knowledge and capacities in a particular local context in order to identify aspects that may encourage meaningful knowledge co-production. We build upon two cities as case studies: Hamburg, Germany and São Paulo, Brazil. We present the results of interviews in dialogue with insights from city documents and an online workshop. We found that even though data and expertise is available, its use remains unsystematic, while climate action is mostly hampered by missing political capacity, silo mentalities, and a structural lack of resources. We identified a paradox where social transformation is addressed by technocratic solutions and a high appreciation for mutual learning in knowledge co-production processes. We conclude that to make use of its transformative potential, the implementation of knowledge co-production for climate action in practice needs to become more holistic. This includes the integration of non-climate information linked to local concerns and values as well as a shift in focus from output to its procedural benefits.

A disconnect in science and practitioner perspectives on heat mitigation

Researchers and city practitioners are paramount stakeholders in creating urban resilience but have diverse and potentially competing views. To understand varying stakeholder perspectives, we conducted a systematic literature content analysis on green infrastructure (GI) and reflective pavement (RP). The analysis shows a United States (US)-based science-practice disconnect in written communication, potentially hindering holistic decision-making. We identified 191 GI and 93 RP impacts, categorized into co-benefits, trade-offs, disservices, or neutral. Impacts were further classified as environmental, social, or economic. The analysis demonstrates that US city practitioners emphasize social and economic co-benefits that may not be fully represented in the scientific discourse. Scientists communicate a broader range of impacts, including trade-offs and disservices, highlighting a nuanced understanding of the potential consequences. Identifying contrasting perspectives and integrating knowledge from various agents is critical in urban climate governance. Our findings facilitate bridging the science-policy disconnect in the US heat mitigation literature.

Bridging the Implementation Gap: A Holistic Approach to Urban Climate Governance

Bridging the Implementation Gap: A Holistic Approach to Urban Climate Governance

Identifying mindsets for urban sustainability transformation: insights from Urban Labs

AbstractIncreasing calls for transformation to address climate change and related challenges underscore the societal imperative to shift from mindsets that drive environmentally unsustainable and socially unjust processes to mindsets that enable urban sustainability transformations. However, it is not always clear what such mindsets comprise, if and how they can be shifted and under which conditions. Fragmented understandings of the concept of mindsets across disciplines and limited empirical analysis beyond Europe and North America have hindered progress in this field. To address these gaps, this article proposes a novel conceptual and analytical framework for identifying mindsets. The framework is applied to data collected from an exploratory survey involving over 150 participants from five Urban Labs in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Through cluster analysis, three distinct personas are identified: the Skeptical Activist, the Optimist Technocrat and the Bystander with Mixed Feelings. These are fictional characters that represent groups of individuals with defining mindsets, demographic characteristics, capacities, trust levels and network features. Results offer valuable insights into the emotions, beliefs, values, perceptions, attitudes and worldviews that guide the behavior of diverse stakeholders, from policymakers to often marginalized community groups, in urban climate governance. Despite its limitations, namely the relative homogeneity of our non-randomized sample, the article advances the understanding of the human dimension of climate change and its interlinkages with urban development goals. It also proposes social innovation strategies to trigger mindset shifts, foster climate action and accelerate urban sustainability transformations.

Ambitious climate targets and emission reductions in cities: a configurational analysis

ABSTRACT Cities have become increasingly vocal in addressing climate change, crafting climate mitigation strategies, and committing to ambitious emission reductions. Previous studies found no evidence that ambitious targets, analyzed as a single factor, translate into actual emission reductions in cities. Yet, is this still the case if ambitious targets are analyzed in combination with other institutional and socioeconomic factors? We carry out a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of all cities reporting their emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) where data are available for at least four years between 2000 and 2020. The analysis tests whether ambitious emission reduction targets, in conjunction with size, affluence, and favourable domestic enabling conditions are systematically associated with substantial emission reductions. Results show different configurations leading to emission reductions. In some configurations, ambitious targets are redundant or counterproductive. In other configurations, ambitious targets are necessary to achieve emission reductions. These results call for greater attention to cities’ heterogeneity when studying urban climate governance.

Governing climate mitigation in a megacity: Tapping opportunities in the multi-level governance system?

ABSTRACT Given its sheer complexity and multi-level nature, climate change presents a new governance challenge for urban authorities and actors. By zooming in on the megacity of Jakarta, Indonesia, this paper aims at providing a more nuanced understanding of the forming of urban climate governance in a particular geographical context outside the elite roster of climate frontrunners. Our paper shows that Jakarta’s participation in the transnational cities networks has provided a platform for the city to sustain its climate capacity and agenda. However, although the decentralized system of climate framework allows local cities to navigate their climate responses, limited authority over certain climate-related sectors may remain to confine the city government’s actions. Our case study of Jakarta reveals a fact that the path toward low carbon development is subject to the political dynamics at the provincial and national levels that often diverts its policy from achieving the climate goal.

Regulatory Effect Evaluation of Warming and Cooling Factors on Urban Land Surface Temperature Based on Multi-Source Satellite Data

Various physical characteristics of urban impervious surfaces (ISAs) and urban green spaces (UGSs) collectively regulate environmental temperatures through heating and cooling processes. However, current research often analyzes each regulating factor as an independent variable when examining its relationship with land surface temperature (LST), with limited studies considering the combined contribution weights of all regulating factors. Based on multi-source remote sensing data and ground observations from the near summers of 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2018 in the built-up area of Xuzhou City, numerical values and spatial distributions of 15 regulating factors, including ISA density (fi), land surface albedo (Albedo), population density (Population), anthropogenic heat flux (AHF), maximum ISA patch index (LPIISA), natural connectivity of ISA patches (COHESIONISA), aggregation index of ISA patches (AIISA), average shape index of ISA patches (SHAPE_MNISA), UGS density (fv), evapotranspiration (ET), UGS shading index (UGSSI), maximum UGS patch index (LPIUGS), natural connectivity of UGS patches (COHESIONUGS), aggregation index of UGS patches (AIUGS), and average shape index of UGS patches (SHAPE_MNUGS), were separately extracted within the study area. Using geographically weighted regression models and bivariate spatial autocorrelation models, we separately obtained the quantitative and spatial correlations between the 15 regulating factors and LST. The results revealed that all selected regulating factors exhibited high goodness-of-fit and significant spatial correlations with LST, which led to their categorization into eight warming factors and seven cooling factors. The factor detection of the Geographic Detector further reveals the combined contribution of all regulating factors to LST. The results indicate that cooling factors collectively have higher explanatory power for LST compared to warming factors, with UGSSI contributing the most to LST, while Population contributed the least. Furthermore, the interaction detection results of the Geographic Detector have highlighted variations in the explanatory power of different factor combinations on LST. Ultimately, it has identified factor combinations that have proven to be most effective in mitigating the urban heat environment across three scenarios: warming factors alone, cooling factors alone, and a combination of both warming and cooling factors. The suggested factor combinations are as follows: fi ∩ Albedo, fi ∩ LPIISA, UGSSI ∩ fv, UGSSI ∩ LPIUGS, fi ∩ UGSSI, and Albedo ∩ UGSSI. Therefore, our findings hold the potential to provide a valuable reference for urban planning and climate governance. Tailoring factor combinations to the local context and selecting the most effective ones can enable cost-effective mitigation of the urban heat environment.

What motivates urban climate leaders? A study of urban climate governance in eight Swedish municipalities

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the motivations behind urban climate governance in eight Swedish municipalities. The study demonstrates that political consensus among, and willingness of, urban political leaders is of importance for motivating climate actions. Municipalities are moreover motivated by the accomplishments of other cities, national and subnational policies, and an increasing climate concern in society. In line with previous research, individual policy entrepreneurs have been important for local climate action; however, with the adoption of national and subnational policies, local climate policies are becoming increasingly institutionalised. Although some of the conclusions of the study confirm the significance of a polycentric governance approach, little relevance was attributed to citizen participation. The institutionalisation of urban climate governance deserves further attention so as to better understand how the dynamics of polycentric governance can be affected, and what implications this may have on climate policy-making process, and the engagement and support of urban residents.

“The crisis justified the urgency, but now we have to go back to the rule of law”: Urban mobility governance during Covid-19

ABSTRACT During COVID-19, many cities built pop-up infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians. We analyse the experiences of Geneva and Lyon through a qualitative approach based on document analysis and interviews with institutional and societal actors. We explore what contributed to the development of pop-up infrastructure during COVID-19, and how these interventions were shaped by and affected policy-making processes and actors’ agency. We found that COVID-19 accelerated social and political trends regarding urban mobility. In both cities, authorities used the crisis to push through existing plans. Authorities’ commitment and the existence of ready-to-implement plans proved crucial. The implementation processes constituted a breach from usual procedures. In Geneva, this empowered actors who usually act from the margins. In Lyon, authorities adopted pop-up infrastructure as a way to reduce costs. Our study clarifies the potential of experimentation in a context of crisis for urban climate governance and highlights the democratic implications of such interventions.

Three tensions in governing energy demand: A social practice perspective on Nordic urban interventions

Affecting future urban energy demand will play a significant role in mitigating climate emissions. While the literature has amply focused on the outputs of successful urban climate governance, there has been less focus on the organisational challenge that affecting energy demand will represent. By foregrounding the work practices of civil servants engaging with these issues, this study offers new insights into the possibilities and constraints of affecting energy demand. Inspired by work on social practice theory applied to organisations, it maps the tools, materialities and identity-related dynamics that affect civil servants' work. Empirically, the paper builds on interviews, document analysis and field notes taken in ten Nordic cities. The paper finds that the local agency for governing urban demand is contingent on navigating three tensions: (1) broadening the benefits of climate measures beyond carbon emissions, (2) challenging often politically attractive technologies, and the associated range of actors seen as relevant and (3) clarifying the role and responsibility of municipalities in relation to intervening in citizen's energy demand. By identifying the organisational tensions that civil servants face, the paper helps to understand the challenges encountered in advancing a local climate agenda, and the novel forms of agency that organisations can mobilise.

Philanthropic foundations as urban climate policy entrepreneurs

ABSTRACT Cities are increasingly presented as key sites of effective climate action. However urban climate governance is suffering from an implementation gap, and a democratic deficit associated with its technical focus and difficulties to address social climate justice issues. Philanthropic foundations have been heavily involved with climate issues, contributing to the positioning of cities as key actors on this front. Yet, their role in transforming urban climate governance from within is still little studied. We propose a conceptual framework to specify their contribution in solving or reinforcing the challenges of urban climate governance, and investigate their effects through a qualitative in-depth study of the processes of urban climate governance at the stages of plan making and implementation. Considering certain benefits in terms of effective field-building, but drawbacks for equity, democratic legitimacy and accountability, we argue that philanthropic foundations are urban climate policy entrepreneurs whose impact on urban governance is ambiguous.

Localising centralised climate policies in Ghana: insights from 3 local governments

ABSTRACT Urban climate governance scholarship has paid little attention in Sub-Saharan Africa, where studies of this kind are needed. Using semi-structured interviews with officials from three local governments with populations less than 300,000 inhabitants, this paper explores how centralized climate policies are implemented locally in Ghana. The results show that though the national climate policies are good tools, local government’s ability to implement them is quite limited due to a lack of independence and funding to make climate decisions. But with the growing climate crisis, the paper concludes that urban climate governance is likely to improve especially in developing countries.

Nonprofit Sector Size and the Breadth of Local Government Climate Actions: Exploring the Moderating Role of Collaboration

Existing studies often use the association between sector sizes to test the supplementary and complementary models of government–nonprofit relations, assuming that one mode of government–nonprofit relations dominates a policy subsector. We challenge this assumption and propose that the relationship between nonprofit sector size and the breadth of local government policy actions depends on their level of collaboration. Situated in the context of urban climate governance and drawing information from a national survey of U.S. local government climate actions, we test this modified model and find a statistically significant moderation effect of collaboration. However, contrary to our proposed hypotheses, our findings suggest that a positive association between the number of environmental nonprofits and governmental climate actions exists when the level of government–nonprofit collaboration is low to moderate. We posit that the adversarial lens of government–nonprofit relations and the cost of collaboration are key to understanding these surprising findings.

Just transition in the post-pandemic city

ABSTRACT This paper asks how the pandemic has affected climate governance, with a specific focus on just transition in cities. We respond to Westman and Castán Broto’s (2021) challenge that three assumptions are frequently reproduced in the urban climate governance literature and ask: (1) Are social justice and environmental sustainability separated? (2) Does a sectoral perspective on cities constrain conceptions of climate justice? and (3) Is there action rather than just plans? We address these questions by studying three cities in the South West of England (Bristol, Bath, and Exeter) that have expressed aspirations for rapid and just transition to net zero. There are promising signs of climate action, although the pandemic slowed it down somewhat. Climate justice is not sufficiently embedded in plans or actions. Commitment to just transition is present but partial and often unspecified. Social justice and ecological sustainability are too often treated as separate goals, more likely to come into conflict with each other, than addressed jointly. Too much climate work in cities takes place in silos around energy and transport but separate from other sectors. There is a notable failure to engage with civil society for a just transition. We conclude that for cities to truly implement a just transition, better engagement with grassroots actors from across sectors and parts of society is necessary. The development of tools which support cities to analyse the complex interplay of distributional, recognitional, participatory and restorative aspects of justice could be an important part of delivering this change.

Institutionalising Urban Climate Action: Recent Recognitions

With in-depth knowledge of the urban climate governance literature, studies of this nature have yet to be fully explored in the context of institutionalisation. Knowing which aspects are well-researched and where in contrast, research gaps lie, this paper systematically reviews the relevant literature to understand how urban climate governance has been institutionalised in cities and municipalities by following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) and analysing English language journal articles published between 1990 and 2020 in the Web of Science database. As the concept of institutions is becoming more prominent in urban climate change literature, the findings indicate that urban adaptation was mentioned more frequently than mitigation, among other topics. Moreover, the research gaps encompass several institutional challenges associated with urban climate governance. Therefore, one essential step is to focus on new institutional arrangements for advancing climate goals across multiple localities.

Institutionalizing urban climate governance in the global South? Evidence from Tehran urban management, Iran

ABSTRACT Local governments across the world have an increasingly significant role to play in climate change resiliency at both community and city levels. Urban climate governance has been increasingly a popular concept and framework for building capacity towards urban resiliency. Nevertheless, and despite the considerable vulnerability of Iranian cities and on top of that the capital, Tehran, to climate change threats, few studies have evaluated the barriers and challenges of the city’s local governments for enhancing the capacity of climate governance. This paper assesses the urban climate governance capacity in Tehran urban management system. Methodologically, this study uses previous successfully deployed analytical frameworks, developed by Tanner et al. (Urban governance for adaptation: Assessing climate change resilience in Ten Asian cities (IDS Working Paper 315). Institute of Development Studies, 2009) and updated the variables through various newly released research on urban climate governance in developing countries, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. The results show that, through the lens of assessing variables, Tehran municipality faces a handful of problems in institutionalizing urban climate governance in its setting due to the unintegrated urban management structure as well as the unwillingness of the local body (Islamic City Council) along with urban branches of the national government to function in an integrated way in term of urban climate policy.

What Does Scholarship on Institutionalizing Urban Climate Action Say?

With in-depth knowledge of the urban climate governance literature, this paper reviews the relevant scholarship on institutionalizing climate action in cities and urban areas to understand which aspects are well-researched, providing guidance to scholars in the field. The results show that articles addressing urban climate adaptation make up a large of the selected literature. The analysis has identified ideas about how innovation may be reinforced. Therefore, one critical step is to explicitly investigate how global North and South cities are testing new institutional arrangements and experimenting with adaptation and mitigation policies, plans, and processes as they seek to develop and advance their climate goals.

Norm domestication challenges for local climate actions: A lesson from Arizona,USA

AbstractResearch on norm domestication in multi‐level governance structures is overlooked in urban climate governance and policy literature. This paper conceptualizes multi‐scalar interactions of norm domestication for local climate actions. The city of Phoenix, which operates under the “purple” (blue cities and red legislatures) state of Arizona, is analyzed to illustrate how a local government can take up the climate actions left in the void at the state and federal levels. The empirical findings reveal important temporal politics at the state level that influenced the local government's climate norm domestication. The period of Democratic party leadership diffused climate norms at the state‐level and positioned the local government more as a climate policy‐taker, adopting decisions from the state legislature. Swings in the state‐level executive orders under the subsequent period of Republican leadership, however, forced the local government to seek some common ground for norm domestication, usually related to the nonpartisan goals of economic development. Consequently, local climate actions are subject to depoliticization of climate change from the higher‐level governance structures. Overall, decarbonization targets are not being directed in ways that lead to a broader shift in the socio‐technical system but would support short‐term emission reductions if multiple institutions, both at the state and sub‐state levels, created spaces for collaboration rather than competition.