Revisiting the urban politics of climate change

Abstract

In our 2005 paper, Rethinking Sustainable Cities, we made a case for the increasing significance of climate change in the urban politics of sustainability. Taking a multilevel governance perspective, we argued that the ‘urban’ governance of climate protection was not confined to a local arena or to the actions of the state, but rather was orchestrated through the interrelations between global, national and local actors across state/non-state boundaries. We revisit these arguments and examine their validity in the light of the rapidly changing landscape of urban responses to climate change and the growing academic literature in this field. We consider in turn: the ways in which climate change is shaping urban agendas; the utility of multilevel governance perspectives for understanding this phenomenon; and the extent to which we can identify a ‘new’ politics of urban climate change governance and its consequent implications for the development of theory and practice in this field.

Keywords:

• urban governance
• climate change
• multilevel governance
• politics
• transition

Acknowledgements

Since working together in this area, our thinking on the issues raised has been influenced by a number of colleagues and we would like to acknowledge their input into our work, with especial thanks to JoAnn Carmin, Vanesa Castán Broto, Mike Hodson, Matthew Hoffmann, Kristine Kern, Heike Schroeder and Simon Marvin. Harriet's work in this field has also been considerably advanced through her ESRC Climate Change Fellowship, Urban Transitions: Climate Change, Global Cities and the Transformation of Socio-technical Networks (Award Number: RES-066-27-0002), which has also supported her time in writing this article.

Notes

1. The case of Melbourne presented here draws extensively on Bulkeley and Schroeder (2009).

2. The members of NAGA include ‘the Cities of Banyule, Darebin, Hume, Manningham, Melbourne, Moreland, Whittlesea, Yarra, Nillumbik Shire Council and the Moreland Energy Foundation Limited (MEFL)’, see http://www.naga.org.au/.