Neighbourhood planning and the spatial practices of localism

What does neighbourhood climate action look like? A scoping literature review

“…Some scholars press on the need to recognise the unique position of each neighbourhood based on its history (Elwood, 2002 ), socio-economic conditions (Passe et al, 2020 ) and urban legislative framework (Bradley et al, 2017 ). Neighbourhood environment history (Kellogg, 2002 ), for example, holds the knowledge of urban nature and ecosystem.…”

“…Cross-sector collaborations would have a high success rate if they are driven by dedicated stakeholders and champions. Further, devolution of power to the neighbourhoods, as is being done in the UK, presents initial evidence on how residents often favour a preservation of local environment, character and social well-being over a pro-growth agenda (Bradley et al, 2017 ). Experience from projects designed with neighbourhood residents can help identify and assess the correlation between potential risks and weak infrastructure within their neighbourhood (Hendricks et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Neighbourhood climate action builds upon the rich literature and practice around neighbourhood renewal (Rohe, 2009 ; Rowlands, 2011 ) and sustainability (Grazieschi et al, 2020 ; Luederitz et al, 2013 ) by underlining the new skills (Cloutier et al, 2018 ), tools (Pulselli et al, 2018 ) and constellations (Aylett, 2013 ) needed to address climate change at the neighbourhood scale. Neighbourhood climate action further provides a contextual boundary and analytical sharpness to bottom-up action for sustainability (Seyfang & Haxeltine, 2012 ; Seyfang & Smith, 2007 ) by bringing forth the unique planning mechanisms (Bradley et al, 2017 ; Rohe, 2009 ), motivations (Kwok et al, 2019 ; Ruef & Kwon, 2016 ) and challenges (Aylett, 2013 ; Pulselli et al, 2018 ) of the neighbourhood scale.…”

“…Neighbourhood climate action moves beyond the individual or the state, and focuses on the community (Aylett, 2013 ; Joshi et al, 2022 ). Concepts like low-carbon localism are beginning to define and create a framework for bottom-up climate action in urban neighbourhoods (Bradley et al, 2017 ). Further, the COVID-19 pandemic had restricted people’s movement and brought back the focus on their immediate neighbourhood surroundings (Joshi et al, 2020 ; Moreno et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Urban studies are building on the lessons learnt from sustainable urbanism and moving towards carbon urbanism (Hughes et al, 2020 ; Long & Rice, 2019 ). In comparison, limited attention has been paid to the scale of the urban neighbourhood as a site for addressing GHG emissions (Pulselli et al, 2018 ; Welegedara et al, 2021 ) and locating climate action (Bradley et al, 2017 ; Gilderbloom et al, 2017 ). To understand the scale of this gap, we mapped research articles between 1980 and 2020 on three research databases, namely Scopus, Web of Science (WS) and Google Scholar (GS), to compare the volume of research on ‘cities + climate action’ against ‘neighbourhood + climate action’.…”