Advocating Urban Transition: A Qualitative Review of Institutional and Grassroots Initiatives in Shaping Climate-Aware Cities

Abstract

Climate change and its challenges have long been incorporated into the policy-making process. Advocacy actions urge to strengthen the socio-ecological resilience through engagement with stakeholders, feedback recollection, and testing of solutions. Several initiatives have been born to boost cities’ actions toward climate change mitigation and adaptation. Institutional coordinated actions such as transnational municipal networks (TMNs) and non-institutional, grassroots movements for climate action, are among them. The study focuses on four TMNs and two grassroots movements, which have an impact on the European and/or worldwide contexts. They are investigated qualitatively, reflecting on the roles and contributions to climate change that they provide both alone and together. The research questions focus on the instruments/elements/factors that they put in place to support the transition, the key messages, and how these are conferred to their key targets. The initiatives have been investigated in both the grey and scientific literature. The main results show that grassroots movements for climate action and TMNs have the potential to better support cities in their climate transition. However, local governments are urged to take advantage of both initiatives’ ability to develop networks of support, innovation and a sense of belonging. In conclusion, the research states that the two initiatives should be effectively connected and integrated with a complementary role concerning planning actions.

Urban Adaptation to Climate Change State of the Art: Evaluating the Role of Adaptation Assessment Frameworks through a Systematic and Bibliometric Analysis

“…However, it is quite interesting to note that this section is mainly divided into two core parts: the first one being related to participation and participatory approach as ways to support the transformation of urban contexts. This is not surprising as in many other contexts related to climate change this is also a crucial aspect (for example in the context of smart city and energy transition grassroots initiatives are very important innovative ways to perform urban transformation as described in [133]). The second part is composed of the implementation of specific strategies linked to a particular theme or new technologies, as well as physical interventions related to urban form and nature-based solutions.…”

Understanding Energy Citizenship: How Cultural Capital Shapes the Energy Transition

“…More recently, citizens have built communities around the question of how energy components are sourced, and how energy waste is managed (e.g., Neessen et al, [29], Roversi et al, [24]). Furthermore, studies have expanded on the concept of energy citizenship to account for institutional innovations, legislative frameworks, variations in promotion methods, implementation and planning, transformative policy-making processes, climate transitions, and introductions of new themes such as energy democracy, justice, and sustainable development [24,[30][31][32][33][34][35]. In short, by actively participating and engaging in these transitional processes related to energy, climate change, and sustainability, citizens reaffirm and reenergize their citizenship within the energy transition movements [33].…”

Beyond Collaboration: A Network Analysis of Local Stances and Global Frameworks in the Collective Design of the City

“…These phenomena have a twofold nature: on the one hand, they are localized and they operate in a tangible and spatially evident environment which articulates the nodes of the urban fabric (Orioli & Massari, 2023) -they are social centers, cultural organizations, and neighborhood committees, "intermediate places" (Massari, 2019) that offer informal services, share information, enable, produce local agency; as hybrid governance configurations they often combine a societal vocation, cultural programming and political initiatives for the sustainable transition of cities (Sabatini, 2022), while contributing by both their actions and the imageries that they produce to enacting an "alternative city", which opposes the current status quo (Morea & Sabatini, 2023). On the other hand, they are networked at both the local/national level and to broader national and international environments (Boulanger & Massari, 2022), producing a local-global feedback loop (Tsutsui, 2017). This loop has a twofold effect: it informs practices and more grounded actions at the local level, and it produces agency and reconceptualizes political frameworks at the global level (Maskovsky, 2020).…”