What does neighbourhood climate action look like? A scoping literature review

Abstract

Cities are recognized as an important scale for framing and implementing plans and policies for action on climate change. Within the structure of cities, it is in urban neighbourhoods that climate action becomes tangible and has the potential to engage communities. Despite its importance, scholarly literature has played limited attention to the scale of the neighbourhood as a site for locating climate action. The objective of our paper is to provide an overview of the role of neighbourhoods in leading bottom-up climate action and its implications for urban planning based on a qualitative scoping review. Our findings indicate that neighbourhoods are conceptualized as a physically bounded scale for climate action as well as a web of social networks and relationships enabling this action. Neighbourhood climate action aims to achieve neighbourhood scale sustainability and resilience by engaging with residents, municipalities, local academic institutions, neighbourhood associations and non-governmental agencies. Scholars engage with a wide range of concepts like place-based attachment and social mobilization as well as established practice-oriented tools in defining and measuring neighbourhood climate action. However, the neighbourhood scale struggles with limited resources and power in creating sustained climate action as well as in engaging with and addressing socio-economically marginalized communities.

Muddling through Climate Change: A Qualitative Exploration of India and U.S. Climate Experts’ Perspectives on Solutions, Pathways, and Barriers

“…This recognizes the limitations of one-way knowledge transfer approaches that have been of ongoing interest for climate science communication, e.g., [58]. Taken together, these point toward a need for research and practice to explore how community-level engagement might change what is seen as politically feasible [59,60]. It also suggests an important link to framing mitigation and adaptation as national or local in scope.…”

The importance of distinguishing climate science from climate activism

“…Nevertheless, I would argue that motivations are more helpful than restrictions, at least in the long run. My criticism of an uncontrolled amalgamation of climate scientists and climate activists should not be understood as a general critique of climate activism, for which there are many constructive ways 26 , especially when accepting that climate mitigation and adaptation are both desirable options, and that non-action can be an important part of activism.…”

What triggers individual climate actions in different neighbourhoods? Individual, collective, cultural, and socio-structural factors

“…Even though the neighbourhood is indeed dependent of larger sociotechnical systems, such as the infrastructure of a city, the systems border makes these outer conditions more visible and manageable. Neighbourhoods are where people live and where they spend most of their free time and where many concrete climate actions individuals can engage in are implemented (Joshi, Agrawal & Lie, 2022). Yet, a comprehensive study analysing and comparing the drivers and barriers of climate action on the neighbourhood level in a selection of European neighbourhoods with a rich variety of characteristics, has to our knowledge not been conducted before.…”