The Role of Pilot Projects in Urban Climate Change Policy Innovation

Abstract

Cities are taking a leadership role in addressing global climate change and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but policy innovations are needed to help cities move from goals to outcomes. Pilot projects are one means by which cities are experimenting with new ways of governing and financing climate change mitigation. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the role of pilot projects in urban policy innovation: their emergence and rationale, and the means by which they ultimately scale up and out to reduce GHG emissions. We use this framework to evaluate a pilot project for retrofitting social housing buildings in Toronto. We find the initial pilot project helped address the challenges of pursuing deep retrofits of social housing. Scaling these lessons up to the city level required overcoming challenges to financing and coordinating a larger project; scaling out to the provincial level revealed institutional and political obstacles to pursuing the co-benefits of deep building retrofits in social housing. Bridging agents play an important role in both scaling processes. The analysis reveals the additive nature of urban policy innovation and the dynamic interplay of change agents and institutional and political context in innovation processes.

Climate changed urban futures: environmental politics in the anthropocene city

“…how successful experiments and innovations travel across contexts or about how they are transferred' (Peng et al 2019, p. 303). As Smeds and Acuto (2018, p. 554) put it 'the pathways through which 'scaling up' occurs in cities, or could ideally occur, remains relatively unclear with limited systematic analysis within city networks or academia' and there are broad concerns about a lack of understanding of how these processes actually contribute to achieving better outcomes (Hughes and Besco 2018; see also Nevens et al 2013). Indeed, detailed case-study work appears to suggest that what is important in making experimentation a viable response to climate challenges is not so much the process of scaling, but one of embedding (Hughes andBesco 2018, Peng et al 2019).…”

“…As Smeds and Acuto (2018, p. 554) put it 'the pathways through which 'scaling up' occurs in cities, or could ideally occur, remains relatively unclear with limited systematic analysis within city networks or academia' and there are broad concerns about a lack of understanding of how these processes actually contribute to achieving better outcomes (Hughes and Besco 2018; see also Nevens et al 2013). Indeed, detailed case-study work appears to suggest that what is important in making experimentation a viable response to climate challenges is not so much the process of scaling, but one of embedding (Hughes andBesco 2018, Peng et al 2019). Goh (2019) calls our attention to the presence of network formations as a means through which resources, ideas, actors, and power come to be held in relation to one another and create the capacity to intervene in diverse urban contexts as experimentation with urban water management travels globally from the Netherlands.…”

Culture-led urban regeneration and local expectations of urban void renewal in eastern Lisbon

“…Thus, it is possible to move beyond a linear and top-down layout of diffusion of innovation, and to thus promote their democratization (…) Based on this idea, it is critical to emphasize the importance of this research method in the context of socio-cultural innovation in urban areas. (Andre, Estevens, & Leandro 2016: 44) This attempt to prototype new territorial solutions for the reoccupation of urban voids (Murovec & Kavas 2018, Hughes, Yordi, & Besco 2018, Popering, Verkerk & Buuren 201, Vreugdenhil 2010, Arwin van Buuren & Derk Loorbach 2009, Buuren & Loorbach 2009, Schuiling 1996 can result from a single process, closed in time and area of influence, or can comprise a series of processes in several spaces. It was originally based on climate change themes and flood control in the Netherlands, but the themes and approaches have been changed to include other areas of intervention, namely abandoned, informal and vacant spaces, referred to as urban voids.…”

Editorial Introduction: Governance, Citizenry, and Methodological Advancement in Policy Research

“…Within the first theme, two articles focus on approaches to governance taken by public agencies at varying levels. Hughes, Yordi, and Besco’s (2020) work builds upon the sustainability transitions literature (as summarized by Armstrong & Kamieniecki, 2019) by creating a theoretical framework for urban policy innovation that analyzes how experimental pilot projects emerge and help cities overcome challenges to climate change mitigation, specifically focusing on how and when these projects scale up and out to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The authors use this framework to evaluate the Canadian city of Toronto’s energy efficiency retrofitting of social housing buildings and determine three important features of pilot scaling processes.…”