Abstract
Seeking to govern the city in relation to climate change is a political project that at once imagines the present in terms of the future and the future in terms of the present. The urban politics of climate change has brought multiple visions of the possibilities (and limits) of urban futures. In this context, we find urban responses taking experimental form – creating sites through which to explore and experience different futures. They provide spaces in which utopian visions can be imagined, enacted and contested. Conceptualizing urban climate change experiments as heterotopic sites seems fruitful in at least two regards. Firstly, it captures their provisional and ambivalent relationship with the broader urban milieu. Secondly, and even more critically, it opens up the dialogues between the future and present which are at the heart of the climate governance project, and highlights the spatial form of these politics. We examine both with reference to two examples of climate experimentation in Berlin and Philadelphia.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 350-369 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Environment and Planning D: Society and Space |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Apr 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This context of budgetary austerity makes it more notable that both the Coolest Block Contest and Solar Atlas proved able to mobilize considerable capital from public and private sources. In both cases, the utopic of climate change – specifically the idea of a wholesale transformation to a more sustainable and more just city – was central to this ability. Consider again how the interventions were justified in the opening section of the paper: Philadelphia as a healthier, safer, greener community; Berlin as having a particular responsibility for climate protection. In Philadelphia, climate change unlocked for what at heart was little more than a home improvement scheme both the very-substantial funding stream provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) under which significant tranches of funding were available for energy efficiency works, and some $500,000 for the Contest alone from the Dow Foundation (Interviewee, MOS). In Berlin, climate change was the justification for funding injections from the European Fund for Regional Development, the entrepreneurial Dachkampagne (‘roof campaign’) which was engaged to promote the project (Interviewees, Berlin Senate, Berlin Partner, Solar Entrepreneur), and ultimately, building owners. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Harriet Bulkeley’s ESRC Climate Change Leadership Fellowship (RES-066-27-0002). Earlier versions were presented in various fora, supported by Gareth Edwards’ British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SG121306) and the INOGOV COST Action (IS1309).
UN SDGs
This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
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SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities -
SDG 13 Climate Action
Keywords
- Berlin
- climate change experimentation
- climate politics
- Foucault
- governing the future
- Heterotopia
- Philadelphia
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