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A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities
- Source :
- Global environmental change, 2012, Vol.23(1), pp.92-102 [Peer Reviewed Journal], Global Environmental Change
- Publication Year :
- 2012
- Publisher :
- Elsevier, 2012.
-
Abstract
- Highlights ► A database analysis reveals urban climate change experimentation as a global trend. ► Experimentation is a recent trend not confined to specific world regions or cities. ► Although experimentation is heterogeneous, energy experiments predominate. ► Multiple actors, often through partnership, intervene in urban climate change governance. ► A characteristic trend of experimentation led by private actors emerges in Asia.<br />Cities are key sites where climate change is being addressed. Previous research has largely overlooked the multiplicity of climate change responses emerging outside formal contexts of decision-making and led by actors other than municipal governments. Moreover, existing research has largely focused on case studies of climate change mitigation in developed economies. The objective of this paper is to uncover the heterogeneous mix of actors, settings, governance arrangements and technologies involved in the governance of climate change in cities in different parts of the world. The paper focuses on urban climate change governance as a process of experimentation. Climate change experiments are presented here as interventions to try out new ideas and methods in the context of future uncertainties. They serve to understand how interventions work in practice, in new contexts where they are thought of as innovative. To study experimentation, the paper presents evidence from the analysis of a database of 627 urban climate change experiments in a sample of 100 global cities. The analysis suggests that, since 2005, experimentation is a feature of urban responses to climate change across different world regions and multiple sectors. Although experimentation does not appear to be related to particular kinds of urban economic and social conditions, some of its core features are visible. For example, experimentation tends to focus on energy. Also, both social and technical forms of experimentation are visible, but technical experimentation is more common in urban infrastructure systems. While municipal governments have a critical role in climate change experimentation, they often act alongside other actors and in a variety of forms of partnership. These findings point at experimentation as a key tool to open up new political spaces for governing climate change in the city.
- Subjects :
- Global and Planetary Change
Infrastructure
Governance
Ecology
Mitigation
Political economy of climate change
Corporate governance
Geography, Planning and Development
Climate change
Context (language use)
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Article
Variety (cybernetics)
Climate change mitigation
General partnership
Urban climate
Regional science
Sociology
Adaptation
Cities
Climate change experiments
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Global environmental change, 2012, Vol.23(1), pp.92-102 [Peer Reviewed Journal], Global Environmental Change
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....e3dbb07b3935844ec6a6ece0005a2a31