Urban Decarbonization: Politics and Practices of Carbon Neutrality

Urban transformation for decarbonization is a significant challenge. Despite widespread and growing adoption of local goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, climate change mitigation action in cities has taken a piecemeal rather than systemic approach. This dissertation examines how urban low carbon transformations are being imagined, implemented and evaluated. The research design uses a mixed methods approach, including discourse analysis of policy storylines, textual network analysis of planned urban carbon neutrality configurations, and three in-depth urban case studies of Stockholm, London and San Francisco. First, the research examines how urban decarbonization is being imagined by identifying visions for the built environment in carbon neutral urban futures and the storylines driving those urban imaginaries. Key findings include that the developing sociotechnical imaginary of urban carbon neutrality is structuring shifts in policy and practice and that different imaginaries of energy futures are sending cities down divergent sociotechnical paths. Second, the research analyzes the implementation of urban decarbonization. Using a material politics approach, the dissertation examines patterns in which aspects of buildings and energy infrastructure are made to matter as actors implement low carbon measures in the case study cities and finds that emerging patterns in practice carry implications for whether or not cities are on trajectories toward decarbonization. Third, the dissertation contributes to methods of evaluating urban decarbonization by applying a different measure for assessing the effectiveness of urban climate measures – transformative capacity. Using this approach, the dissertation concludes that transformative capacity is under development for new urban space in the case studies, but the effort to change the existing built environment has faced challenges that have limited implementation. This research makes two main contributions to climate governance literature. First, it advances new ways to consider successful progress in urban carbon governance. By combining an examination of the material politics of implemented decarbonization efforts in cities with a policy scaling and entrenchment lens, this dissertation opens up the consideration of progress in carbon governance to encompass the messy, materially embedded and contested transformation of infrastructure. Second, this research develops a deeper understanding of urban carbon neutrality, which represents a new scope of urban action that is aiming for transformative change. The dissertation not only breaks down the building blocks of planned decarbonization, but also considers the ways that these elements are woven together to become narratives that tell an engaging story about the future of cities. Responding to the climate crisis means disruptive change to many of society’s systems in order to avoid catastrophe. While the scope of the transformation is daunting, the process of reimagining and reconfiguring cities can also open the door for new possibilities.

Keywords: carbon
climate change
energy
governance
transformation
urban
Advisor: Maclaren, Virginia