Citation for published item:fulkeleyD rrriet nd gst¡ n frotoD nes nd wssenD enne @PHIRA 9vowEron trnsitions nd the reon(gurtion of urn infrstrutureF9D rn studiesFD SI @UAF IRUIEIRVT F Further information on publisher's website:The nal denitive version of this article has been published in the journal Urban Studies, 51, 7, 2014 c SAGE Publications Ltd at the Urban Studies page: http://usj.sagepub.com/ on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/ Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Low carbon transitions and the reconfiguration of urban infrastructure AbstractOver the past decade, a growing body of research has examined the role of cities in addressing climate change and the institutional and political challenges which they encounter. For the most part, in these accounts, the infrastructure networks, their material fabric, everyday practices and political economies, have remained unexamined. In this paper, we argue that this is a critical omission and develop an approach for understanding how urban responses to climate change both configure and are configured by infrastructure networks. Central to any such analysis is, we argue, the conception of how and why (urban) infrastructure networks undergo change. Focusing on urban energy networks and on the case of London, we argue for an analysis of the 'urban infrastructure regimes' and 'experiments' through which climate change is governed. We find that climate change experiments serve as a means through which dominant actors articulate and test new 'low carbon' logics for urban infrastructure development. We argue that experiments work by establishing new circuits, configuring actors in new sets of relations and through these means realizing the potential for addressing climate change in the city. At the same time, experiments become sites of conflict, a means through which new forms of urban circulation can be confined and marginalized, leaving dominant energy regimes (relatively) intact.

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Different disciplines are grappling with the concept of ‘urban transformation’ reflecting its planetary importance and urgency. A recent systematic review traces the emergence of a normative epistemic community that is concerned with helping make sustainable urban transformation a reality. Our contribution to this growing body of work springs out of a recent initiative at the World Resources Institute, namely, the WRI Ross Prize for Cities, a global award for transformative projects that have ignited sustainable changes in their city. In this paper we explain the competition-based approach that was used to source transformative initiatives and relate our findings to existing currents in urban transformation scholarship and key debates. We focus on one of the questions at the heart of the normative urban transformation agenda: what does urban transformation look like in practice? Based on an analysis of the five finalists, we describe urban transformation as encompassing a plurality of contextual and relative changes, which may progress and accelerate positively, or regress over time. An evaluative approach that considers varying ‘degrees’ and ‘types’ of urban transformation is proposed to establish meaning within single cases and across several cases of urban transformation.

While energy has not traditionally been a subject of major theoretical concerns in the social sciences, developments in recent years, driven by policy ambitions to decarbonise energy generation, have opened up the energy system to social science enquiry. In the process, theoretical developments are converging towards a broadly speaking ‘socio-technical’ framing of energy issues, which challenges scientific–rational accounts of technological change and diffusion that still dominate in policy circles. Approaches based on a socio-technical reading of technological change offer valuable insights into how to conceptualise the transition towards more sustainable energy futures and the embedding of new technologies into the existing energy system. This paper offers a review of both well-established and more recent social science approaches to understanding energy issues, with a particular focus on the uptake of renewable energy in the electricity sector. It is suggested that the move from a techno-economic towards a socio-technical paradigm is related to the acknowledgement of the heterogeneity and complexity of energy issues, where the more interdisciplinary socio-technical approaches are able to provide more analytical scope for understanding contemporary developments in the energy system.

Local and urban authorities are increasingly seen as crucial in translating national and international agreements into locally applicable guidelines for the delivery of climate policy. It has been recognised that energy policy is a crucial area for bringing about emissions reductions, based on the close relationship between energy consumption and generation and greenhouse gas emissions. Against this background, this paper investigates how Barcelona and London are formulating urban planning policies that encourage the use of low-carbon and renewable energy technologies to meet the heating and electricity demands of new buildings and those undergoing major renovation. Drawing on theoretical insights from science and technology and urban studies, the paper contributes to the debate about changing patterns in urban energy provision, arguing that there are general aspects to reconfiguring energy patterns in the city, such as the technological choices involved in articulating more sustainable energy futures and socio-technical obduracies of established 'urban energy regimes'. It is recognised that place-specific features must be taken into account in the process of reorienting cities' energy trajectories onto more sustainable pathways, in particular with respect to the potential for carbon mitigation from the built environment.

The inauguration of Medellín, Colombia’s aerial cable car in 2004, is widely seen as a key turning point in reversing the city’s historical reputation for drug and gang-related crimes towards greater inclusiveness and public safety. Analyses of Medellín’s transformation have tended to focus on establishing the immediate positive outcomes achieved from the cable car and assessing persistent inequality and the fragile balance between enfranchisement and top-down institutional control. In this paper, we take these interpretations of Medellín’s transformation as our starting point and propose that a lasting legacy is to be found in the way the city plans for and works in disinvested areas. Our focus is on examining the elements that have made transformation possible in Medellín. We begin by exploring a set of framing conditions during the period of 1991 to 2000 (‘Before Line K’) and then outline the implementation of Metrocable and its shorter-term outcomes (‘Executing Line K’), before finally reflecting on the wider transformative impacts of this experience (‘Beyond Line K’). As key takeaways, we highlight the role of national policy, municipal finance, and community engagement in bringing a highly informal space into the reach of public institutions, thus providing insights for urban decision-makers looking to do the same.

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