Revisiting the urban politics of climate change

Bulkeley, H.A.; Betsill, M.M.

Abstract

In our 2005 paper, Rethinking Sustainable Cities, we made a case for the increasing significance of climate change in the urban politics of sustainability. Taking a multilevel governance perspective, we argued that the ‘urban’ governance of climate protection was not confined to a local arena or to the actions of the state, but rather was orchestrated through the interrelations between global, national and local actors across state/nonstate boundaries. We revisit these arguments and examine their validity in the light of the rapidly changing landscape of urban responses to climate change and the growing academic literature in this field. We consider in turn: the ways in which climate change is shaping urban agendas; the utility of multilevel governance perspectives for understanding this phenomenon; and the extent to which we can identify a ‘new’ politics of urban climate change governance and its consequent implications for the development of theory and practice in this field.

Citation

Bulkeley, H., & Betsill, M. (2013). Revisiting the urban politics of climate change. Environmental Politics, 22(1), 136-154. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2013.755797

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Feb 28, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 29, 2014
• Journal: Environmental Politics
• Print ISSN: 0964-4016
• Electronic ISSN: 1743-8934
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 136-154
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2013.755797
• Keywords: Urban governance, Climate change, Multilevel governance, Politics, Transition.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1488801