Urban energy transitions through innovations in green building

Recent debates on climate change have increasingly focused on cities as a strategic spatial scale to implementss climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Within this context, green building and the way the built environment interfaces with urban structures and services have become significant levers of action for cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become climate change leaders (Bulkeley et al., 2011). Approximately 30% to 40% of final energy consumption is linked to buildings and, as a consequence, the building sector has been identified as one of the most relevant sectors to reduce CObuilding is largely associated with technological innovations, building design and the way elements are embedded within the overall urban fabric, a shift towards green building in cities largely depends on modes of sustainable governance. Relevant dimensions include support of and for green policies and incentives, institutional support through resource centres, think tanks, certification bodies, and training, aspects of inclusivity both in the planning process as well as the later use of (and access to) buildings and to a considerable extent on lived sustainability (i.e. the ways individuals interact with and use buildings). This latter dimension of possibly changing user behaviour and consumer lifestyles seems to be absent from most of the energy scenario studies, as Samadi et al. (2016) revealed in their assessment of a series of internationally influential studies and policy programmes. Like other scholars (e.g. Sachs, 1999; Princen, 2003; Schneidewind & Zahrnt, 2014), they plead for a stronger conceptualization of sufficiency oriented policy approaches and differentiate persuasive instruments (e.g. through education and communication) from incentive based (price/tax policies) and more coercive approaches (limits, bans)

Global-local tensions in urban green neighbourhoods: A policy mobilities approach to discursive change

The ways in which green neighbourhoods have developed over recent decades has become increasingly globalized, driven by the challenges of climate change and the globalization of knowledge exchange including a shift towards quantified approaches of carbon control. As a result, cities do not only share knowledge, experiences and practices but also compare and compete with each other in their pursuit of sustainability leadership. To understand the emergence and establishment of certain approaches over others, policy mobilities research has emphasized the role of certain actors and institutions in promoting, mobilizing, adapting and mutating policy models, practices and knowledge. This paper extends the policy mobility literature by emphasizing the temporal dimension of green neighbourhood development. We reconstruct and compare trajectories of four green neighbourhood developments in Freiburg, Vancouver and Luxembourg in terms of ‘extroverted’ dimensions that focus beyond the city, and ‘introverted’ dimensions that are more localized in nature. Findings highlight the relational character of the role and meaning of these green neighbourhoods over time that reflect a global shift in how green urbanism is conceptualized and put into practice

Interactive Knowledge Generation in Urban Green Building Transitions

Knowledge coproduction between practitioners and scientists offers promising opportunities for the emerging research field of the geography of sustainability transitions. Drawing on experiences from an international research project on urban green building transitions, this article explores the potentials and challenges of interactive and collaborative knowledge generation methods in understanding sustainability transitions. Our results show that ongoing engagement with local experts and practitioners through interactive World Cafe workshops and follow-up exchanges allows for a better understanding of the research context and knowledge exchange to all participants involved in the research process