Environment & Urbanization

World leading environmental and urban studies journal

An Urban Politics of Climate Change: Experimentation and the Governing of Socio-technical Transitions

Author(s): 
Harriet A Bulkeley, Vanesa Castán Broto, Gareth A S Edwards

Publisher: 
Routledge

Year: 
2015

Urban experiments addressing climate change open up a platform for cities, where government organizations, civic society and private actors can explore, learn and challenge their approaches to climate governance beyond institutional limits.

This book begins by framing cities at being at the heart of dealing with climate change, regarding both their major contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and their role as critical players for mitigation and adaptation. Whereas most research to date highlights experimental projects, interventions and schemes as ad hoc spaces of exploration that need to be scaled up, the authors argue for considering experiments as crucial in urban governance in order to achieve climate change transitions. 

The socio-technical interventions they consider are experimental in their open-ended nature, yet purposive, with the aim to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change impacts in urban centres. Readers will get a vivid image of the authors’ understanding of experiments through the wide variety of economic and social contexts, geographical distributions and practical foci of the case studies. Direct quotes from interview partners are used to illustrate arguments, allowing the voices of the people involved in the case studies to come through. The authors divide their analyses of experiments into three processes – making, maintaining and living; this also helps provide an easy-to-follow structure for the case study chapters.

Analysing these three processes makes it obvious that experiments are ambiguous. They have competing rationalities and techniques, which can on the one hand challenge current regimes, and on the other hand contribute to their reproduction. For example, the zero carbon housing case from Bangalore, as a private and gated community, does not challenge underlying structural inequalities that exist in the city. But it is an experiment in terms of different technologies and their suitability for the existing context.

Thus, the book gets to the heart of climate change debates by addressing power and agency through dissecting specific governance processes. Readers will find many interesting cases of urban experiments analysed through critical political and social theory – and in particular, perspectives on governmentality. These are linked to the socio-material understanding of cities and their role in the art of governing for climate change in cities.

Book note prepared by Julia Wesely

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