Over the last three decades European cities have strengthened their cooperation at EU level to tackle common problems. The joint action of cities has been particularly concerned with the issue of sustainability, signalled by the establishment of specific municipal networks. Socio-ecological urban networks have attracted growing academic attention. However, existing research presents two main limitations: firstly, it overlooks the urban context, and secondly, it is mainly qualitative, and the few quantitative studies do not provide an exhaustive account of the urban drivers underpinning SEUN membership. This article adopts an urban approach to isolate the urban-level economic, political and institutional factors that impact on the involvement of second-and third-tier cities in European SEUNs. For this, logistic and OLS regression models are used to identify the urban-level factors affecting SEUN membership. The findings show that inter-urban networking in Europe is an economic and political strategy adopted mostly by post-industrial cities to strengthen their profile.
Air pollution is one of the primary concerns of our society for its effect on human health and the environment. Among the policy measures that can be put in place to limit air pollutant emissions, end-of-pipe technologies and/or regulatory instruments may be implemented through legislative acts. Also, equally important are behavioural measures, requiring citizens’ active involvement. The success of any measure to limit pollutant emissions requires the acceptance by the citizens that, in turn, implies a correct perception of the main pollutant emission drivers. We present here the comparison between the public perception of air pollution sources and the real-world situation through a survey carried out in seven European countries and involving 16 101 respondents. Our study shows a dramatic underestimation of the contribution of the agri-food sector to air pollution. This result is common to all respondents in the seven countries examined and only to a small extent depends on gender, age and socio-economic status of the respondents.
European cities have been committed to achieve urban sustainability, participating into interurban networks dealing with socio-ecological issues. By examining the incentives derived by the involvement in these networks and the municipal political milieu where the decision about network participation is taken, this article seeks to understand the motivations for European cities to take part in sustainability networks. To do so, a small-N qualitative analysis was undertaken. The results show that cities' participation in socio-ecological urban networks is motivated by the economic, political and formative incentives that membership provides, and is influenced by institutionalised values, political agency and previous cooperative experience.
Degrowth is establishing itself as a theory within the ecological and post-development scholarship. At the core of degrowth is a localcentric perspective, whereby small urban agglomerations are considered as the key actors of the political and economic system of an imagined post-consumerist and post-capitalist society. Degrowth proponents thus argue that the fundamental steps to achieve a truly democratic, socially just and ecological society should be taken at local level. However, in the degrowth theory a thorough debate about why the local level would be the most suitable spatial units to achieve degrowth is scarce. The importance of the small urban size appears to be axiomatic, rather than supported by substantive arguments. By engaging with non-mainstream strands of green political thought, this paper critically reflects upon the localcentred perspective at the core of the degrowth theory, identifying its main practical and theoretical shortcomings.
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