Contradiction, intervention and urban low carbon transitions

This paper presents an analysis of contradictions in urban low carbon transitions as engines of change. Following Kojéve’s reading of contradiction in Hegel's oeuvre, I argue that contradiction is a constitutive feature of low carbon interventions. This is an alternative to conventional readings of contradiction as a provisional encounter of opposites in which one will eventually cancel the other. I unpack the concept of contradiction in three ways: first, by displaying a Hegelian-inspired understanding of contradiction in relationship with change, time and desire; second, by explaining how inherent contradictions can be read in relation to the excesses that characterise the deployment of methods of calculation in low carbon interventions; and third, by situating these contradictions within the overall dynamics of carbon governance and purposive attempts to bring about a low carbon transition. The paper explores the practical implications of this analysis in a case of low carbon interventions in social housing in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The case study shows that contradictions are at the heart of low carbon interventions. In this context, contradiction analysis may provide a direction towards broader reconfigurations of social and technological practices and generate a desire to change

Innovation Territories and Energy Transitions: Energy, Water and Modernity in Spain, 1939–1975

This paper engages with debates about the need for a deeper theorization of the political and spatial aspects of socio-technical transitions by examining the relevance of the concept of political technology for this body of theory. Political technologies are systematic and applied frameworks deployed to advance specific strategies to transform governments and societies. Looking at the role of political technologies within processes of systemic innovation, I propose that political technologies develop within socio-technical regimes in purposive attempts to transform them. From this perspective, socio-technical transitions emerge in relation to the visions that inspire them, the forms of knowledge that enable their implementation and how they relate to access to resources and innovations. To illustrate the argument, the paper presents a case study of a socio-technical transition that took place in Spain with the consolidation of the electricity industry and the development of a national electricity network during Franco's dictatorship (1939–1975). Such a transition was possible within the framework of a politics of building hydraulic works, whereby certain spaces were designated as reservoirs of water. The way in which such networks were constituted still resonates with Spanish energy policy today

Government by experiment? Global cities and the governing of climate change

In this paper, we argue for an approach that goes beyond an institutional reading of urban climate governance to engage with the ways in which government is accomplished through social and technical practices. Central to the exercise of government in this manner, we argue, are ‘climate change experiments’– purposive interventions in urban socio-technical systems designed to respond to the imperatives of mitigating and adapting to climate change in the city. Drawing on three different concepts – of governance experiments, socio-technical experiments, and strategic experiments – we first develop a framework for understanding the nature and dynamics of urban climate change experiments. We use this conceptual analysis to frame a scoping study of the global dimensions of urban climate change experimentation in a database of 627 urban climate change experiments in 100 global cities. The analysis charts when and where these experiments occur, the relationship between the social and technical aspects of experimentation and the governance of urban climate change experimentation, including the actors involved in their governing and the extent to which new political spaces for experimentation are emerging in the contemporary city. We find that experiments serve to create new forms of political space within the city, as public and private authority blur, and are primarily enacted through forms of technical intervention in infrastructure networks, drawing attention to the importance of such sites in urban climate politics. These findings point to an emerging research agenda on urban climate change experiments that needs to engage with the diversity of experimentation in different urban contexts, how they are conducted in practice and their impacts and implications for urban governance and urban life

Splintering Urbanism and climate breakdown

On the anniversary of the publication of Splintering Urbanism, climate breakdown heralds a new era in public investment in infrastructure. However, current proposals for infrastructure overlook two decades of work in infrastructure studies. For example, both the Green New Deal advanced by activists in the United States and the European Green Deal, proposed by the European Commission, establish a dual logic between investments in centralized systems and off-grid systems that reinforce, rather than challenge, the infrastructure models critiqued in Splintering Urbanism. The lessons of Splintering Urbanism debates, such as the rise of post-networked conditions of living in dialogue with everyday practices of living with and against infrastructures, are still missing from the policies that will likely shape urban futures

Climate change politics and the urban contexts of messy governmentalities

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. The first part diagnoses three limitations of current thought on the urban governance of climate change. First, current action emerges within a wave of urban optimism with limited historical sensitivity to previous climate change action. Second, the mobile nature of climate change policies is overlooked in studies that emphasize cities as the unit of analysis for climate action. Third, the focus on global cities or alternative locations that are constructed as exemplary sites takes attention away from the ordinary contexts of action where climate action is most needed. The second part of the paper uses this analysis as the main motivation for a call for studies of climate change governance to engage with the messiness of urban knowledge and action. Three theories of messiness are put forward. The first relates the idea of governance as messiness to postcolonial analyses of radical environmental action. The second emphasizes the messiness embedded in current methods of knowing the city, and the logic of situated knowledge. The third emphasizes messiness in the relations between the body, society and the emotions characterizing the interactions of everyday life

Sacrifice zones and the construction of urban energy landscapes in Concepción, Chile

This article examines how national energy policies in Chile constitute urban energy landscapes characterized by environmental and spatial inequalities. The concept of urban energy landscapes is deployed to explain the spatial patterns resulting from energy governance and energy conflicts in the metropolitan area of Concepción, a metropolitan region of strategic importance in the configuration of national energy policy. These urban energy landscapes result from the constitution of 'sacrifice zones' that reflect an extractivist model of energy production. The combination of qualitative interviews and transect walks reveals different aspects of a dual arrangement of energy infrastructure and urbanization. The city's fragmented landscapes emerge from the coexistence of energy infrastructure and associated industries, with daily activities of communities that have little to do with these industries but live in their shadow. Conflicts in these urban energy landscapes are intense, with every inch of space contested by competing modes of 'being urban.' The urban energy landscape in Concepción is an expression of a clash of social and economic power with local priorities

Green City Promises and “Just Sustainabilities”

Nation states all around the world adopted a New Urban Agenda (NUA) at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016. The NUA brings to the fore the importance of human settlements and urbanization in international development, following the agreements in previous conferences in Vancouver (1976) and Istanbul (1996). One key innovation of the NUA is the recognition of the transformative power of urbanization to deliver jobs, facilitate the spread of technology, and harness sustainability (UN-Habitat 2016). The NUA calls for cities that “leave no one behind”. This emphasis on addressing inequality also underpins other international development policy, such as the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. The NUA calls for Green Cities as engines of sustainable economic growth, offering green investment opportunities such as environmentally friendly construction, sustainable transport, and waste management solutions. According to this international policy agenda, Green Cities should deliver all of the above while responding to changing societal demands. Urban inequality, however, is not foregrounded in Green Cities’ agendas. There is no clear insight about the integration of these two separate aspects of the NUA. I contend that visions of Green Cities as engines of sustainable economic growth are misplaced. Instead, Green Cities should advance urban futures that engage with the needs of citizens, address questions of social and environmental justice, and work with the existing city rather than imposing on it any models of development. My argument focuses on four themes: 1) the promises advanced in Green City discourses; 2) the efforts to integrate social justice agendas in environmental sustainability; 3) the need to revision the variety of natures that integrate the city; and, to conclude, 4) the focus on contradiction as a means to look for new ideas about the city

Governing climate change for a just city: challenges and lessons from Maputo, Mozambique

As new forms of governance for climate change emerge in African cities, will they enable emancipatory and socially progressive transformations or will they exacerbate existing inequality, poverty and vulnerability patterns? This paper presents one of the case studies developed by UN-Habitat Cities and Climate Change Initiative in Maputo, Mozambique. The case analyses first, the production of urban vulnerabilities under climate change, and second, the existing governance arrangements for climate change in the city. Building on the lessons of the case study, the paper argues that to ensure that new forms of climate change governance lead to socially and environmentally just outcomes climate change interventions should, at least, meet two conditions: first, they should consider the close interactions between social and ecological elements and, specially, how patterns of urban inequality interact with environmental factors; second, they should recognise the opportunities in African cities through a broad notion of governance that looks beyond the government as the sole agent of urban change

Harnessing deep mitigation opportunities of urbanisation patterns in LDCs

Cities offer enormous opportunities for climate action that would limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C by 2100 above pre-industrial levels. For example, cities can act through planning and service delivery, bringing together residential, work and leisure in single spaces, and creating better connectivity between areas within and between cities. In Least Developed Countries (LDCs) cities offer multiple opportunities for low carbon innovations given that so much of the cities in LDCs are yet to be built and serviced. The development of high carbon strategies, on the other hand, poses the danger of long-term carbon lock-in and narrows the existing window of opportunity to act. This paper explores the low carbon opportunities and avoided future emissions that cities in LDCs can implement as part of their mitigation pathways. The paper makes the case that deep mitigation efforts in the context of LDCs will need to take place within the broader agenda of sustainable development, poverty reduction, and equity. Examples of transport, energy and low carbon urbanism are discussed as evidence that climate-resilient development, consistent with the 1.5 °C pathway, is already underway in some LDCs

Engineering modernity: Water, electricity and the infrastructure landscapes of Bangalore, India

The concept of ‘nexus’ has gained popularity in urban studies to examine the interconnections between the management of resources and the provision of urban services. This article proposes a conceptualisation of the urban nexus as the contingent product of the operation of physical, ecological and social processes around urban technologies in a specific location. The article focuses on the configuration of the nexus within particular trajectories of urban development, and the wider consequences of these trajectories for urban life. The strategy of the article is to examine the water-energy nexus within a particular infrastructure landscape, that is, as it emerges from the historical co-evolution of social practices and the built environment. Such co-evolution can be described as an urban trajectory that reveals the consolidation of different aspects of the nexus at varying levels from the household to the extra-urban connections that shape the city. This perspective is applied to analyse processes of infrastructure development in the city of Bangalore, India, since the completion of the first works to establish a water network and the electrification of the city at the beginning of the 20th century. The analysis reveals a historically built and context-dependent nexus that reflects the interconnectedness of the mechanisms of infrastructure governance and urban inequality