Frictional rhythms of climate work in city governance

Cities are crucially but problematically positioned to take on the climate crisis. Although local governance seems an appropriate scale for adaptation and mitigation measures, numerous barriers to implementing them effectively have been diagnosed. We argue that a focus on pinpointable barriers neglects the intrinsic organisational dynamics that often impede effective climate action. Drawing on interviews with climate specialists in Finnish municipalities, we engage with local governance practices and study how the interviewees experience and negotiate the complexities of climate work. Using Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, we find that municipalities treat climate issues as auxiliary concerns and subsume them as separate, precarious projects. The various and conflicting rhythms that constitute the relations of organisational practices leave climate and environmental experts in a contentious state. They must not only endure constant sidelining by the core functions of their organisations but also devise strategies to keep climate issues on the agenda. We suggest that organisational practices are constituted by diverging and often conflictual rhythms. Analysing their expressions in everyday climate work, we show how a composed functioning of municipal organisations serves to persistently defer a change of pace towards achieving ambitious climate goals.