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Increasing 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution investigates how combinations of instruments, often called policy mixes, enhance policy learning processes at different levels. It analyzes the European Union's (EU) Covenant of Mayors (CoM) that is underpinned by a set of learning instruments, to promote local action for sustainable energy and climate. The piece offers an original framework to explore whether and how the Covenant enhances learning at the level of European institutions and among local governments. Drawing on an extensive documentary review and elite interviews in four countries (Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK), the analysis shows that the CoM instrument mix has enhanced certain elements of learning within the actors leading the Covenant as well as many of the local governments within and outside the EU, but only if certain conditions operate, such as political leadership, individual motivation and knowledge and regional coordination mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency and severity of many types of extreme weather events may be changing because of climate change. To date, most vulnerability studies and resulting toolkits for decision makers, while state of the art, only address a specific subset of possible extreme weather events and mitigation and adaptation efforts. This paper extends Haddon's strategies to facilitate a holistic, systematic analysis of the options that communities have to cope with uncertain impacts from multiple hazards in multiple sector of society. This framework distinguishes between efforts to reduce the hazard, the exposure, and the vulnerability, thus helping end the semantic confusion of the meaning of adaptation and mitigation. Two case studies demonstrate the merits of the proposed framework. First, we show how the framework can facilitate the systematic identification of mitigation and adaptation strategies for a sector such as human health. Second, we apply the framework to a particular hazard, anthropogenic climate change, in three cities in US Northeast. We find that the three cities pursue a range of strategies, with varying degrees of effort. Comparing cities reveals that some still have unused capacities, especially in terms of reducing the exposure and vulnerability to climate-enhanced hazards. Spreading efforts across multiple feasible strategies increases the robustness of the cities' policy approach and diversifies the cities' investment in the face of an uncertain future. Subsequent work, such as a cost-benefit analysis, would help a decision maker to evaluate policy options and steer research efforts appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]