Castán Broto, V. orcid.org/0000-0002-3175-9859 and Marvin, S. orcid.org/0000-0001-5538-5102 (2024) When cities broke into the global stage: 20 years since the publication of ‘Cities and Climate Change’. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. ISSN 2399-6544
Abstract
This short symposium revisits the book Cities and Climate Change by Harriet Bulkeley and Michelle Betsill and its role in establishing cities as central actors in climate change governance. The contributors to this symposium reflect on the research themes and the book’s legacy from their disciplinary perspectives. The first response explores the tensions between the elevation of cities as sites for climate action and the persistent lack of state action, arguing for meaningful public participation and a labour of making visible how city-based practices respond to climate change. The second response examines how the book has enabled generations of scholars to appreciate the complex constitution of city actors and how they interact/enact global climate governance yet remain frustratingly marginal in the discipline of International Relations. The third response explores how the book positioned the urban as a problem space, a manageable scale of intervention, and a political space with the capacity to enact innovation, triggering new questions about the potential and limits of the expanding responsibilities of cities. The fourth response argues that as cities become active in adaptation, they need to engage in an anticolonial politics of love and hospitality that sheds ‘security’ and makes the self vulnerable to ‘others’ for an effective response to climate change. The symposium concludes with a recap by Betsill and Bulkeley which underscores the variety of interdisciplinary debates that the book has generated, and its influence on current thinking on debates on climate change governance.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page. |
Keywords: | Climate change governance; multi-level governance; urban climate action; international climate regime; climate justice; climate urbanism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Faculty of Social Sciences Research Institute |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 09 Jan 2025 10:14 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jan 2025 10:14 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/23996544241296741 |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:221558 |