Networking Cities after Paris: Weighing the Ambition of Urban Climate Change Experimentation
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12587 |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
Networking Cities after Paris: Weighing the
Ambition of Urban Climate Change
Experimentation
Emilia Smeds
University College London
Michele Acuto
University of Melbourne
Abstract
Over the past few decades, cities have repeatedly demonstrated high levels of ambition with regard to climate action. Global
environmental governance has been marked by a proliferation of policy actions taken by local governments around the world
to demonstrate their potential to advance climate change mitigation and adaptation. Leading ‘by example’and demonstrating
the extent of action that it is possible to deliver, cities have aspired to raise the ambition of national and international climate
governance and put action into practice via a growing number of ‘climate change experiments’delivered on the ground. Yet
accounts of the potential of cities in global environmental governance have often stopped short of a systematic valuation of
the nature and impact of the networked dimension of this action. This article addresses this by assessing the nature, and chal-
lenges faced by, urban climate governance in the post-Paris era, focusing on the ‘experimentation’undertaken in cities and
the city networks shaping this type of governance. First, we unpack the concept of ‘urban climate change experimentation’,
the ways in which it is networked, and the forces driving it. In the second and third parts of the article, we discuss two main
pitfalls of networked urban experimentation in its current form, focusing on issues of scaling experiments and the nature of
experimentation. We call for increased attention to ‘scaling up’experiments beyond urban levels of governance, and to trans-
formative experimentation with governance and politics by and in cities. Finally, we consider how these pitfalls allow us to
weigh the potential of urban climate ambition, and consider the pathways available for supporting urban climate change
experimentation.
Policy Implications
•Urban climate change governance in the post-Paris era is increasingly about experimentation, or testing innovative tech-
nologies and policies ‘on the ground’. This is associated with increasingly complex patterns of city networking, and driven
by priorities going beyond those of the UNFCCC regime. Understanding this new mode of governance as distinct from
conventional local climate policy is necessary in order to harness its potential for global climate change governance.
•Cities cannot ‘save the planet’alone. There needs to be an increasing focus on vertical ‘scaling up’urban climate change
experiments to change regional, national and global policy, as a complement to ‘scaling out’as horizontal replication of
experiments between cities.
•Vertical linkages, including flows of knowledge and finance, between actors at different governance levels need to be built
to create pathways for ‘scaling up’urban experiments, e.g. through the National Urban Policies framework of the UN New
Urban Agenda. IFIs could enable direct access to climate finance for cities to support experimentation and scaling.
•Beyond a preoccupation with technical ‘solutions’to climate change, the social justice implications of the types of urban
environments shaped by experimentation must be more systematically considered. Experimentation with urban gover-
nance and politics holds great potential for reconfiguring urban systems to deliver climate change mitigation and adapta-
tion, which should be harnessed by city leaders.
The potential of urban climate ambition
Over the past decades, cities have repeatedly demonstrated
high levels of ambition with regard to climate action. Dating
back at least to the early 1990s, global climate governance
has been marked by a distinct proliferation in the range and
scale of actions taken by local governments around the
world to demonstrate their potential to advance climate
change mitigation and adaptation. Much of this action has
been facilitated by a sprawling genus of city networks
(Acuto, 2013; Bouteligier, 2013). Arguably, within the last five
years, and especially around the time of the 21st Conference
Global Policy (2018) 9:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12587 ©2018 The Authors Global Policy published by Durham University and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Global Policy Volume 9 . Issue 4 . November 2018 549
Special Section Article
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