There is growing recognition of the importance of funding and financing arrangements to enable climate change adaptation in cities. However, there has been little critical analysis into the underwriting and governance mechanisms necessary support broader scaled application. Through surveying recent literature, this article offers conceptual clarity for understanding emerging adaptation finance mechanisms that intersect with urban governance, planning, and management functions. The article assesses two key conceptual domains: (i) the distinction between adaptation funding and financing and (ii) the synergies, conflicts, and tradeoffs associated with mobilizing adaptation investments in the private sector. The article argues that a clearer delineation of these two domains will clarify the objectives, mechanisms, and larger governance implications of investment in urban adaptation. This article provides a roadmap for future scholarly inquiries that may advance the conceptual and analytical discipline necessary to evaluate the feasibility and desirability of investments from often-conflicting perspectives, interests, and actors.
Abstract:Municipal services-such as water, energy, and waste management-play a significant role in shaping the sustainability of cities. In many places, these services are also fully or partially delivered by the private sector, but we are only beginning to understand the implications this has for the politics and administration of urban sustainability initiatives. In this paper, we use the case of organics waste recycling in the Twin Cities, Minnesota to identify and discuss three ways private sector engagement can shift the political and administrative landscapes of municipal service delivery: through the presence and form of accountability mechanisms, norms and conditions for entrepreneurship, and the feasibility and appropriateness of traditional policy tools for achieving urban sustainability transformations. The analysis highlights the need to better understand best practices available to local governments for pursuing urban sustainability in the context of privatization, the importance of public sector capacity, and the potential for corporate social responsibility in municipal service delivery.
This article uses a new dataset of coded Alberta Throne Speeches from 1906 to 2017 to identify patterns of provincial policy attention to place and urban place across policy issues and time. We discuss three main findings. First, provincial attention to place and urban place is influenced by policy domain: place‐based attention is generally absent in some policy domains, such as macroeconomic policy, and prevalent in others, such as health care. Second, place‐based attention is patterned over time, with a noticeable peak in the post‐war “province‐building” years and distinct troughs in other periods. Finally, we discuss the related but distinct patterns of attention to place and urban place across policy domains and time.
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