Cities,Urbanisation and Climate Change

This Special Issue draws out intersections between two of the most important socio-ecological issues of the 21st century. The first is the rise of the urban form as the dominant geographical context for life on Earth (World Watch Institute, 2007). The second is the emergence of climate change as a real and present threat to socio-ecological sustainability on the planet and a potent, if not dominant, force of urban change. Cities are the defining ecological phenomenon of the 21st century. The point has been reached where the majority of the world’s population now lives in cities. As projected by the UN, between 2009 and 2050, the population of urban areas is expected to increase from 3.4 billion to 6.3 billion, absorbing most of the projected increase in the world population (UN, 2010). With ‘urban activities’ already constituting over 80 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions produced globally each year (UNEP/UN-HABITAT, 2005), what happens in cities will drive the global outcome on climate change. Yet if urban centres drive climate change, they are also amongst the most vulnerable geographical sites to the effects of global warming, whether it is through sea level rise, changes in temperature, or more extreme and uncertain weather conditions. The physical existence of some coastal cities and metropolitan areas is threatened by sea level rise (Nicholls et al., 2008), but many other cities will struggle to remain economically or socially viable without significant investment in climate-proofing infrastructure (Satterthwaite et al., 2009). Cities shielded from the excesses of climate change will come under increasing pressure to accommodate climate refugees from other cities and rural hinterlands (Biermann and Boas, 2010; Nash, 2010).

This Special Issue starts from the premise that cities around the world are being shaped and reshaped in profound and distinctive ways by the strategic selectivities of climate policy, and increasingly by the effects of climate change itself. Urban change and urban politics have always been negotiated around environmental issues (Heynen et al., 2006). To the extent that environmental and social changes co-determine each other, climate change would imply a distinctive new era of globalised urbanisation in which climate considerations impact on all aspects of strategic decisions and everyday life in cities. For Hodson and Marvin (2009) climate change is part of a shift to a new era of ‘urban ecological security’ driven by resource shortages, carbon taxes and the physical effects of climate change. Talk is of developing socio-ecological resilience and adaptive capacity in response to new urban exposures and vulnerabilities. Precisely what this might mean for urban change and urban politics is an open question. Value change around climate change and climate policy is creating opportunities for alternative forms of economic organisation and new social solidarities within and across cities; a new post-carbon political aesthetic based around shared responsibility for the environment, each other and future generations (North, 2010). Yet it is also possible that the urban climate turn could lead to increased social, economic and health inequalities, a narrowing of the socio-environmental agenda and a mandate for a renewed authoritarian politics of urban social control (Swyngedouw, 2007; While et al., 2010).

Since work on the urban–climate-change interface started to emerge in the 1990s, it is clear that the research agenda has established a new level of empirical and intellectual scope. This Special Issue is by no means the first to explore relationships between urbanism and climate change and there is now an expansive literature on the emerging politics of urban climate governance. The literature covers issues of political commitment, international networking, the role of citizens and pressure groups, changes in the political calculus, urban energy restructuring and the changing political ecology of infrastructure (see Bulkeley and Betsill, 2003; Betsill and Bulkeley, 2007; Rice, 2010; Rutland and Aylett, 2008). Research on urban low carbon restructuring has noticeably shifted from a focus on the willingness of politicians and growth regimes to act on climate change mitigation, to a concern with the differential capacity of cities to act on what is increasingly a pressing economic and social imperative (see Bulkeley, 2010). This is reflected in increased efforts to engage and mobilise citizens around climate protection goals as climate change reworks the meaning of citizenship (Rutland and Aylett, 2008; Rice, 2010), as well as a wealth of academic work on good practice in urban climate retrofit (Roaf et al. 2005; Droege, 2009; Newman et al., 2009). Yet urban climate restructuring takes place within a context of considerable uncertainty about future climactic patterns, resource availability, technological innovation and priorities in international and national climate governance. The task of anticipating climate change has prompted growing interest in the science (and politics) of urban climatology and its intersection with issues of urban form and design (Corburn, 2009; Hebbert and Jankovic, 2013).

Climate change presents important challenges and opportunities for urban research. One pressing question is whether the climate shift entails new and distinctive urban theories and conceptualisations. Working through the implications of climate change and climate policy is inherently an interdisciplinary activity that cuts across the political, economic, technical and design dimensions of urban policy (Bulkeley et al., 2010; Jasonoff, 2010). Attention is being given to ontological questions about the distinctive look, feel and sound of the climate-shaped city and the possibility for new urban forms. Climate change has also refocused attention on the resource geography of cities and the connections between carbon footprints, the urban metabolism and distant resource hinterlands. Addressing climate change therefore requires a conceptual framework capable of seeing the city as an assemblage of socio-technical systems that offer up multiple and contested possibilities for climatised urban futures (Urry, 2011). Underlying all of this are the significant challenges arising from the highly uneven geographical impacts of climate change and the differential capacity of people and places to cope with the costs of both climate change and climate policy and benefit from some of the opportunities. Concerns about climate (in)justice have been prominent in international climate policy debates, but its urban implications are starting to be explored within broader conceptualisations of urban environmental justice and urban political ecology (Walker, 2012). The prospect is that climate impacts will compound and reinforce existing economic, social and health inequalities, but also create new urban vulnerabilities. As with other areas of urban climate concern, understanding the fine grain of urban climate vulnerabilities poses significant conceptual and technical challenges as well as political imperatives for action (Walker, 2012).

The contributions to this Special Issue revolve around five common themes:

These themes are explored in a range of different geographical locations incorporating Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

In the first paper, Hebbert and Jankovic (2013) seek to place contemporary scientific and political debates around the connections between cities and climate change within historical context. They question the depiction of climate change as a fundamentally ‘unprecedented’ phenomenon. Claims that climate change represents an unprecedented challenge to humanity place it, unhelpfully according to Hebbert and Jankovic, outside time and space. Within this paper, Hebbert and Jankovic reveal the urban scientific and policy antecedents of the climate change problematic. In scientific terms, this paper outlines the extensive body of work that has revealed the impact of cities on the atmosphere. Unlike the early climate models of the IPCC, this history of the urban atmosphere reveals that cities are not merely annoying aberrations in the synoptic modelling of the global climate, but are key points of connection between humans and the atmosphere. In policy terms, this paper considers the different ways in which the sciences of urban climatology have helped to shape the design and planning of cities (particularly in relation to ensuring the effective ventilation of urban space). Ultimately, this paper reveals that the history of urban-scale climate research has been overlooked within accounts of cities that tend to see them only as contributors to global forms of climate change, or as sites that are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. Historical analysis reveals an important set of micro urban perspectives on climate change that disclose new perspectives on the nature of urban climate change mitigation and adaptation.

In the second paper, Mark Whitehead (2013) explores the contribution that critical urban theory can make to the analysis of contemporary urban climate change adaptation policies. Critical urban theory reveals the contingent and malleable nature of the urbanisation process, but also illustrates the ways in which the urban is connected to systems of economic and political power that operate at scales both within and beyond the city. According to Whitehead, much contemporary work on the links between urbanisation and climate change lacks a theory of the urbanisation process. Through the lens of critical urban theory, Whitehead’s paper shows how the spatial logic of modern forms of urbanisation has contributed to the climate change problematic and how urban responses to climate change are inextricably linked to the systems of international market exchange, financial investment and competition associated with neoliberalism. Drawing on the work of Steven Bernstein, this paper argues that contemporary urban climate adaptation policies are characterised by a form of neoliberal urban environmentalism, which continues to promote market-based solutions to problems that have been generated by free-market urbanism. The paper concludes by considering alternative, more-than-market-based solutions to the challenges of urban climate adaptation. These approaches seek to reframe the urban adaptation agenda as a potential basis for socio-ecological redistribution and compensation (see also Pelling, 2011).

In the third paper, Dierwechter and Wessells (2013) analyse the implementation on the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement in metropolitan Seattle (US). In exploring the delivery of this prominent policy regime, Dierwechter and Wessells focus particular attention on the associated development of new institutions, regulations and investment systems. In addition to exploring the institutional, regulatory and financial aspects of urban climate protection policies, they also consider the role of transurban initiatives (such as the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement) in offering the networks that are needed to support a unified local government response to climate mitigation. The research presented by Dierwechter and Wessells reveals a highly uneven localisation of climate protection policy within metropolitan Seattle. According to these authors, initiatives such as the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement incorporate great diversity in relation to the ways in which partner cities engage with climate protection policies. In this context, Dierwechter and Wessells call for more comparative urban climate change research, in order for us to reach a better understanding of the uneven localisation of climate protection policies.

Aylett (2013) then considers the institutional challenges that climate change presents to the short- and long-term operations of municipal authorities. Focusing on the policy responses of the cities of Durban (South Africa) and Portland (US) to the threats of climate change, Aylett draws on studies of bureaucracies and complex institutions undertaken in sociology and geography to reveal the organisational barriers that exist to effective policy developments in the field. In addition to considering the obstacles that ‘siloised’ systems of policy-making present to climate protection policies, Aylett also explores the opportunities that exist for the development of bureaucratic innovation at a municipal level.

The paper by Hodson, Marvin and Bulkeley (2013) also considers the organisational challenges faced by cities attempting to address the challenges of climate change. Focusing on the cities of London and Manchester in the UK, Hodson et al. analyse the particular challenges associated with implementing low carbon infrastructure and technology into urban space. Focusing specifically on low carbon energy production and consumption, this paper considers the role of key intermediaries (such as ‘Manchester is my Planet’ and low carbon zones) in closing the gap between the strategic visions of national and city governments, and the reality of a lower carbon urbanism. This comparative analysis unpacks different modes of intermediation in low carbon urbanism and reveals the increasingly complex (and multiscalar) context within which urban climate protection policy is being conceived and implemented.

The paper by North and Longhurst (2013) takes forward debate about urban grassroots responses to climate change. Exploring the emergence of Transition initiatives in the UK, this paper conceptualises transition initiatives as progressive ‘knowledge producers’ capable of generating radical visions of future low carbon urban communities. Building on the insights of Hodson et al.’s paper on intermediaries, North and Longhurst explore the ways in which the ideas of grassroots climate protection movements can gain more traction within the complex multilevel systems of governance that surround modern cities. While Transition initiatives are often associated with small-area relocalisation programmes, which are well below the size of a city, North and Longhurst claim that cities may provide creative, multiscalar contexts within which to fuse local carbon reduction strategies with broader systems of urban climate governance.

Petrova et al. (2013) explore the fusing together of discourses of sustainability and climate change within newly developed satellite communities in the Czech Republic and reflect on what this reveals about low carbon urban transitions in post-socialist central and eastern Europe.

The paper reveals that climate mitigation and adaptation considerations are influencing the planning and development of the suburban landscape in the Czech Republic. Echoing the sentiments of Whitehead’s paper, Petrova et al. do however raise concerns that a discursive coalition may be emerging in the Czech Republic, which pays lip service to climate protection policies and continues to support neoliberal forms of urbanisation that ultimately undermine such policies.

This Special Issue concludes with a commentary piece exploring emerging forms of climate protection policies in Asian cities. In this commentary, Kumar (2013) explores how the particular features of Asian urbanism—in particular, its rapid nature and reliance on the informal production of space—present challenges to climate mitigation and adaptation policies. This commentary piece concludes by considering the particular response of Delhi to the threats of climate change. Focusing on the Climate Change Agenda for Delhi 2009–12, Kumar claims that Delhi is failing to recognise the uneven exposures to the risk of climate change that are evident throughout its population, and the important role which informal adaptation measures could play in developing effective urban climate change policies.

We anticipate that the insights conveyed within these papers will be of interest to urban scholars, policy-makers and denizens alike. We would like to thank all of the participating authors.