Metropolitan Strategies and Climate Governance: Towards New Evaluative Approaches

Abstract

In the new millennium, cities have become an emerging force among new forms of subnational climate governance. Of interest is how cities act unilaterally and directly in this new climate politics via the provision of relevant tools. Since metropolitan planning strategies have been considered as important mechanisms for achieving urban sustainability in this period, this research has sought to investigate the importance of these master plans in the delivery of urban responses to climate change. For this purpose, the study has employed a qualitative research methodology with the application of a comparative case study and the progression of a conceptual framework for evaluating climate policies in metropolitan plans of two selected cities—London and Melbourne. The study's results suggest that both the ‘London Plan’ and ‘Plan Melbourne’ incorporate critical elements to enhance climate governance, including the promotion of coordination principles, innovative technologies, a participatory planning approach and a long‐term planning scale. However, the review identified a consistent omission of key principles as identified through the proposed matrix for analysing the climate policies of a city's government, which include risk assessment tools, monitoring systems, distribution, impact frame and accountability. Moreover, the research also revealed the lack of vertical integration in policy formulation and implementation of ‘Plan Melbourne’. Our study suggests that a city's governance structure influences the way it undertakes its climate actions and the potential efficacy of these on a metropolitan scale.

Incorporating Urban Drainage System Resilience in Public Policies for a City in a Developing Country—Colombia

“…These agreements seek to guarantee the adoption of measures toward resilient cities, hence having the potential to lead to flexible or innovative solutions. Additionally, the global level metropolitan strategies have been recognized as key to addressing contemporary urban challenges (Finco and Nijkamp, 2001; Pinson, 2002;Gleeson et al, 2004;Davidson and Arman, 2014;Nguyen et al, 2018). Henstra (2012) researched the process of policy development for resilient cities in two Canadian towns with extreme climates, Toronto and Halifax.…”

Assessing City Governance for Low-Carbon Mobility in London

“…Frameworks for assessing the state of city-level governance for other environmental concerns (such as water and waste), for assessing particular strategies for urban climate action, or for climate change adaptation and resilience, have all been developed and applied in the literature (e.g., [8][9][10]). However, a framework to assess the broad state of urban governance for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, building on a thorough assessment of critical factors, has yet to be developed.…”

Ten years after Copenhagen: Reimagining climate change governance in urban areas

“…To some extent, research conducted during the wave of urban optimism prioritized the identification of parameters to explain successful urban climate governance, which resulted in recommendations for collaboration (Pitt & Bassett, 2013 ), integration across sectors (Kithiia & Dowling, 2010 ; Puppim de Oliveira, 2009 ; Yung & Chan, 2012 ), cooperation across levels of government (Jones, 2012 ; Leck & Simon, 2013 ) and the establishment of long‐term goals and regulative frameworks (Wheeler, 2008 ). During the wave of urban pragmatism , these ideas have consolidated into consensus regarding the need for urban climate governance to be participatory, attuned to bottom‐up dynamics, strengthened in terms of monitoring and extended time‐frames, holistic, and integrated across sectors, scales, administrative boundaries and realms of knowledge (Barton, 2013 ; Chu, Schenk, & Patterson, 2018 ; Dulal & Akbar, 2013 ; Echebarria, Barrutia, Eletxigerra, Hartmann, & Apaolaza, 2018 ; Gouldson et al, 2016 ; Hardoy, Hernández, Pacheco, & Sierra, 2014 ; Hardoy & Velásquez Barrero, 2014 ; Nguyen, Davidson, & Gleeson, 2018 ; Rosendo, Celliers, & Mechisso, 2018 ; Serrao‐Neumann, Renouf, Kenway, & Low Choy, 2017 ; Swart et al, 2014 ; Torabi, Dedekorkut‐Howes, & Howes, 2017 ; Tu, 2018 ; Yasmin, Farrelly, & Rogers, 2018 ). Interest has grown on identifying effective mechanisms for policy management, such as, for example, delivering flexible policies (Daniere, Drummond, NaRanong, & Tran, 2016 ; Radhakrishnan, Pathirana, Ashley, Gersonius, & Zevenbergen, 2018 ; Torabi, Dedekorkut‐Howes, & Howes, 2018 ) and mainstreaming climate concerns into other policy sectors (Di Giulio, Bedran‐Martins, Vasconcellos, Ribeiro, & Lemos, 2018 ; Koch, 2018 ; Sharma & Singh, 2016 ) (although an argument for the need to deliver policies with narrow scope has been made recently, Lyles, Berke, & Overstreet, 2018 ).…”