Navigating Transformations Under Climate Change in Cities: Features and Lock-ins of Urban Climate Governance

Abstract

The scale of cities has become an epicentre of scientific and policy attention for tackling climate change and sustainability challenges. Local governments worldwide have already demonstrated how to harness opportunities for developing innovative and integrated solutions to better tend to the systemic and uncertain nature of urban transformations. However, existing efforts are insufficient for achieving the deep structural changes that are required to address climate change and achieve urban sustainability and resilience. We position climate change in the context of urban transformations to establish the need for a transformation of urban climate governance. From a critical analysis and interrogation of the research published on urban climate change governance, we derive four governance gaps and five underlying lock-ins that are manifestations of the limited effectiveness of existing urban climate governance approaches. We thus showcase where new knowledge about innovation and sustainability transitions can have impact in rethinking and shaping new governance tools and actions. In the final section, we outline the comparative qualitative case study approach used in Part II of this book to explain and evaluate the development of innovative forms of climate governance in Rotterdam and NYC: transformative climate governance.