Resilient Cities? The Global Politics of Urban Climate Adaptation

Abstract

This chapter explores the extent to which cities and city-networks have been able to articulate and negotiate new forms of power by demonstrating a need for recognition and assistance that may facilitate adaptation at the urban scale. Building upon the previous chapter, it makes the case that the politics of urban climate adaptationUrban climate adaptation have occurred in reaction and response to a Westphalian system that effectively reifies the power of nation-states. However, animating, disseminating and in some cases contradicting the politics of multilateral climate governance is a parallel process of network and corporate governance, whose metrics, indicators and benchmarking exercises provide important forms of performative power that are being used to organize and orchestrate the ways in which cities, city-networks and corporations are defining resilience, vulnerability and risk in the Paris climate regime.