Conference Agenda

The last ten years have seen an outburst of research on experimentation in urban environmental governance. From the microlocal to the global level, researchers have investigated how experimentation in cities emerges and is maintained, challenges the political status quo, or deepens social inequalities. Simultaneously, the multiplication of environmental crises worldwide has highlighted the need to rapidly scale up urban experiments and allow transformative change. This has led many scholars to focus on ways to take successful urban experiments from a smaller to a larger scale. These intents generally follow a bottom-up and instrumental approach to scaling. For instance, concepts such as vertical, horizontal, or hierarchical upscaling have helped understand ways in which local experiments may gain significance. Yet, we still do not know what the most relevant approach is to generate catalytic change and have tended to ignore important political and social justice concerns, including power dynamics and equity issues. This panel features critical conceptual and empirical contributions to how urban experimentation, scaling, and transformative change interact. We invite contributions that explore:  Temporal and spatial perspectives: How do we move beyond linear accounts that emphasize hierarchical notions of scale? What other categories and analytical models can explain how experimentation leads to urban transformation?  Politics, participation, and place: How do political processes enable or prevent experimentation from delivering transformation? For example, who decides what constitutes experimentation and where it is undertaken? How do people experience experimentation in their everyday lives and contribute to opportunities for broader-scale urban transformation?  Normative assumptions: To what extent are normative views on experimentation embedded in dominant policy rationales? For example, is experimentation part of economic principles on growth and entrepreneurialism, which may reproduce urban conditions of inequality?

Expectations that cities can manage the growing challenges of climate change have increased. However, it has become evident that a lack of national and regional support cannot be compensated by local initiatives, in particular in smaller cities and towns. Therefore, we argue that the decarbonization of cities requires deliberate scaling within, across, and beyond cities. Scaling within cities means that place-based experiments need to be rolled out from one neighborhood to other neighborhoods. Scaling across cities refers to horizontal interactions between cities, which is facilitated by networks such as the Climate Alliance. Finally, scaling beyond cities implies the emergence of vertical relations between local governments on the one side and regional and national governments on the other. This paper combines these three dimensions of spatial scaling with four modes of governing climate change in cities, ranging from hard to soft instruments: (1) regulation, planning and monitoring (such as local heat plans or legislation which makes solar roofs mandatory for new buildings); (2) provision and funding (ranging from local funding programs for heat pumps to national funding programs such as the German Kommunalrichtlinie; (3) voluntary action and enabling (such as agreements between local actors or carbon agreements between cities and the national government); (4) Self-organization (such as climate-neutrality goals for own facilities or setting up a local climate council). Our analysis focuses, first, on a mapping of experimental climate policies, which are scaled within, across, and beyond European forerunner cities. Starting from this general overview, we will then ask whether and how German forerunner cities differ from these general trends. Second, we will compare the development in German cities in three selected areas (electricity, heat, mobility) in more detail by analyzing how local climate experiments and the mix of policy instruments have changed over time. In general terms, we find that German forerunner cities lag behind cities in Northern Europe, which have developed and introduced new instruments such as carbon budgets and climate contracts. Moreover, we see a hardening of soft instruments in German cities, in particular in the area of heat transitions. Overall, the study shows that the mix of policy instruments is changing. We see not only a hardening of soft instruments but at the same time also a trend from scaling within and across cities towards scaling beyond cities, i.e. regional and national policies focusing on local climate action seem to be on the rise.

Cities have taken center stage in the fight against climate change, yet commentators see a widening gap between the high-level rethoric and the action on the ground. European cities are "on track" with meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, with a growing number of initiatives to show for. It is unclear, though, whether this is the first step towards a decarbonized and resilient urban future, or whether instead it represents an inflation of short-lived prestige projects that will never deliver on a larger scale. We thus turn away from the limelight of "showcase" climate experiments and into the realm of "anonymous", day-to-day adaptation and mitigation processes: how do they play out in the absence of project grants, scientific support, and fast-track permit procedures from the local administration? What additional challenges do they face? Most importantly: can we look at anonymous processes as the scaling out of showcase experiments, or are they entirely different matters? To answer these questions, we turn to the case of Berlin, Germany. Sites such as Potsdamer Platz, Tempelhof, the ufaFabrik, or the Prinzessinnengarten have gathered attention from both academia and the public, highlighting the Berlin's committment to climate experimentation. Furthermore, the city is well aware of its internal diversity and heterogeneity, and the resulting need for context-aware, diversified strategies. With a broad range of showcase experiments to draw lessons from, the city should be in the best position to scale out climate experimentation and expand climate action within its borders. Through an embedded comparative case study of three anonymous and three showcase experiments, we address the institutional and organizational dimension of local climate adaptation and mitigation in Berlin. The comparison focuses specifically on the effects of the missing attention and preferential treatment. Results show how, out of the limelight, the city's committment to climate action falters, and institutional barriers prevail. Scaling out climate experimentation, in other words, seems to require deep, second-order scaling, where institutional preconditions are scaled out, not just the experiments. Implications for research and practice are then explored.

The urgent need to decarbonise social and economic systems calls for transformational change on all levels of governance. In the UK cities are formally recognised as having a key role in implementing the necessary changes to meet the target set by the UK Government in its Net Zero Strategy. However, there is no guarantee that the transition to a net zero future will automatically be socially and economically just, as urban environmental governance is complex. This is not only because of the multiplicity of agents involved in relevant processes and decision making, but also because of the diversity that characterises cities by definition. In this paper we take stock of three interrelated studies we conducted in two cities in the Southwest of England, Bristol and Bath over a period of two years (2021-2023). Our place-based approach aimed at examining discourses of climate governance in these cities and at capturing people's perceptions of socioecological transformations taking place in their cities in the implementation of net zero. We offer critical insights into how local authorities, policymakers, and citizens experience and view newly introduced climate governance schemes in their localities, such as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. We critically reflect on upscaling local experiments and provide insight into how unique local traits (e.g. UNESCO status) provide opportunities for policy and practical innovation, without hindering the possibility of upscaling. We also assess the place of the principle of economic growth in emerging policies and practices. Our paper moves beyond empirical observation to offer a normative account of the manifestations and relevance of principles of justice in the discourses and practices we studied. Overall, the paper contributes to scholarship on climate justice in the context of urban governance.

While achieving more water resilient cities through an increased focus on Nature-based Solutions (NbS) is clear, how such solutions can create deeper transformation particularly in under-resourced, inequitable cities of the Global South remains unclear. In this paper, we use a decolonial lens to reflect on a place-based transdisciplinary NbS research project that has focussed on the multifunctional retrofitting of a stormwater detention pond through coproduction in Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town. Our analysis points to the significance of stormwater ponds as promising-yet-contested leverage points for co-implementing NbS towards water resilience in Cape Town. We also find that ‘scaling deep at the margin’ is an important initial condition for experimenting with alternative socioecological possibilities in contexts of deep difference. In scaling deep, resistance and desire are central dynamics that help rework the unjust power asymmetries that constitute environmental and infrastructure realities in the post-apartheid city. Findings also highlight the need to not foreclose possibilities of failure in transdisciplinary NbS experiments when resistance is encountered and the need to explore the generative insights that may result from failure. We conclude that sustainability transitions in the Global South may be more productively understood as contested, emergent and seldom-complete endeavours in which social and environmental justice should remain the goal.