Locating climate adaptation in urban and regional studies

ABSTRACT

This paper adds new insights to the relationship between city-regionalism, the territorial logics of the competition state and how climate adaptation is located in state spaces. Whilst climate adaptation governance is positioned within national economic sectors, it highlights an emerging city-regional policy dimension to such governance. The spatial reconfiguration of climate change adaptation governance reflects a tension between three quite distinct processes: (1) the sector-driven territorial logic of the national competition state; (2) the emergence of city-regionalism as an adaptation governance response to increased competition; and (3) the assertion of ‘national’ political priorities in the implementation of climate adaptation across subnational territories. Future climate adaptation governance research needs to address the uneasy relationship between the rise of city-regionalism and the sector-led priorities of the competition state.

KEYWORDS:

• climate change adaptation
• climate policy and governance
• city-regionalism
• territorial logics
• competition state

JEL:

• Q54

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Andrew P. Kythreotis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9436-8185

Candice Howarth http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2132-5747

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. This situation is not helped by efforts to ‘flatten’ scale as an ontological construct (Marston, Jones, & Woodward, 2005), which in turn encourage a mistaken view that (subnational) territorial politics are causally insignificant if not downright antediluvian features in the landscape of state spatial reconfiguration (Jonas, 2013; Morgan, 2007).

Additional information

Funding

Andrew Kythreotis and Andy Jonas, respectively, thank the Regional Studies Association (RSA) for funding support through an Early Career Research Grant and a Fellowship Research Grant. Andrew Kythreotis, Andy Jonas and Candice Howarth also thank the British Academy and the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for funding to continue this research in the context of the new civil politics of climate change.