Abstract This paper explores the complex dynamics surrounding the implementation of climate change adaptation (CCA) approaches in the context of European cities, particularly those in peripheral regions facing heightened climate vulnerabilities. It argues that while scaling successful local adaptation strategies is essential, such efforts must move beyond replication to embrace translation, learning and place-specificities across multiple levels ranging from the local niche to the wider regime. Drawing on case studies from two European regions, it proposes a framework based on rationalisation, experimentation and legitimisation to assess what aspects of CCA are scalable and how this can be operationalised. This paper positions local-level CCA initiatives as potential drivers of broader sustainability transitions and practically asks how we can better foster governance arrangements that support systemic change.
Abstract Demographic decline sharpens trade-offs between retaining working-age populations and sustaining foundational services in multiscale regimes that combine directionality with subsidiarity. We ask whether future-oriented local strategies converge in meaning or mainly in template-aligned language. Using a corpus of Japan’s national, prefectural and municipal strategies across phases, we measure lexical similarity (TF–IDF) and meaning-level alignment (semantic proximity). Vocabulary converges quickly, often via prefectural strategies, while semantic alignment is slower and weakly related to population change. The results show policy translation, not simple travel, and expose rhetorical compliance when indicator-led evaluation mistakes lexical convergence for substantive coordination.
As cities confront worsening climate stresses, they need decision-relevant information about climate risks and resiliency options. Urban climate change assessments, typically conducted through partnerships between researchers, city governments and community stakeholders, play a vital role in supporting the incorporation of climate risk information into city planning and policy. Yet assessments also face growing barriers, ranging from stakeholder fatigue to climate change denial and lack of funding support. Drawing upon the case example of New York City's climate assessment efforts, this paper explores the evolving role of climate change assessments as a venue and tool for advancing collaborative, community-centred urban climate resilience.
This study examines how heatwaves reshape urban consumption across online and offline channels. Using detailed credit card transaction data from Seoul (2022-2025), we analyse category-level spending within urban clusters. We find that heatwaves do not uniformly reduce total sales; instead, they induce heterogeneous channel reallocation. In some sectors, online transactions expand under thermal stress, partially offsetting offline declines, while in others substitution is limited and demand contracts. We conceptualise this process as consumption reconfiguration. Because clusters differ in their sectoral mix, such channel shifts generate uneven spatial consequences. The findings refine urban resilience debates by highlighting adaptive reorganisation rather than aggregate decline.
Since re-branding itself as the world's first climate bank, the European Investment Bank (EIB) was nominated by the European Commission to help implement its bold European Green Deal (EGD) by mobilising & euro;1 trillion over a decade for sustainable investment towards transition from 2021. As a policy-taker, the EIB supports EGD objectives, including, ensuring the transition is "just" - defined as not leaving people and places behind. However, cities and urban areas, associated with their greater contributions to climate change, may be better placed to obtain demand-based climate finance than their less urbanised counterparts - potentially posing a challenge to a just transition. We conduct a regional analysis of EIB climate finance, confirming a trend whereby early-adopter larger cities are more likely to obtain climate finance per inhabitant than their counterparts, which may present a challenge to policy efforts to ensure the transition leaves no-one behind.
Climate change-induced extreme weather events continue to occur. China experiences flooding due to climate conditions and rapid urbanisation (Ding et al., 2022; Zheng et al., 2018). Sponge City, initially developed in China, is a systematic water management approach promoting green and blue infrastructure, including wetlands and rain gardens, together with sustainably engineered drainage systems (Li et al., 2016). This study examines stakeholder familiarity with Sponge City in a Canadian city. Geospatial data and satellite imagery identified optimal locations for implementation. Findings suggest that Sponge City enhances urban resiliency; however, issues remain, including public involvement, financial and physical barriers.
This article theorises remunicipalisation as a political and spatial project of resistance to neoliberal governance and corporate capture. Drawing on insights from energy democracy literatures, we conceptualise remunicipalisation not as a managerial fix but as a transformative strategy to reclaim local control over essential infrastructure. Through comparative analysis of grassroots public power campaigns in Maine and Rochester, NY, we foreground the role of localised regimes of obstruction, comprising entrenched corporate-state alliances and risk-averse political cultures in shaping spatial inequality and thwarting democratic ownership of energy infrastructures. In doing so, the paper contributes to theorising local public ownership as a terrain of contestation and possibility in the energy transition.
Can socially or community-owned enterprise models systematically enable equitable climate action, as has been previously suggested by case study research? To empirically measure and test this proposition, we systematically surveyed all North American community land trusts (CLTs), which primarily serve lower-income households. We found that a majority of CLTs engage in climate action, with mitigation efforts more prevalent than adaptation efforts. Statistical analyses confirm CLTs' rate of action cannot solely be explained by their climate hazards exposure. This suggests they can concurrently address economic precarity whilst enabling climate action, thereby enabling a "just transition". Nonetheless, CLTs fail to engage in climate action as often as they would like, reflecting financial constraints shaped by policy choices. This suggests the simultaneous existence of a climate "double bind", whereby CLTs must, to a degree, choose between economic security and climate goals. We conclude by identifying potential policies to address this double bind.
The last two and a half decades have witnessed a remarkable process of global de-privatisation locally: leading to the term remunicipalisation. There is, however, little research on the extent to which remunicipalisation challenges the inequities and injustices associated with privatisation and dominant neoliberal agendas at urban and regional scales. This paper aims to fill this gap with a two-step analysis of remunicipalisation outcomes. First, we use the Public Futures database to assess its global geography and development implications. Second, we develop a comparative analysis of remunicipalisation in Germany and the UK. This demonstrates the potential contribution of remunicipalisation to alternative place-based development strategies but also its limits in tackling broader spatial. Germany's decentralised political economy has provided more opportunities for such strategies, while the UK's overcentralised political economy has been more restrictive. But, even here, determined local agency has used remunicipalisation for progressive ends.
The green transition unfolds against a backdrop of widening territorial inequalities driven by the spatial concentration of the knowledge economy. While knowledge-intensive regions with educated, affluent populations might be expected to champion environmental causes, this paper reveals a counter-intuitive pattern. Using novel measures of pro- and anti-environmental activism across Italian provinces (2012-2022) and a Bartik-like instrumental variable, we find that knowledge economy concentration reduces pro-environmental activism nearly twice as much as anti-environmental activism. This asymmetry creates a compositional shift where knowledge-intensive areas exhibit relatively more anti-environmental sentiment in their remaining activism. The findings challenge simplified assumptions about education, affluence and environmental support, revealing that territorial economic structures fundamentally alter engagement patterns. Green transition policies must account for how different economic contexts generate distinct mobilisation patterns, addressing both the reduced collective action in knowledge hubs and resistance in vulnerable territories.
In 1990, Bolivia implemented structural adjustment policies, including the privatisation of water and sanitation companies. Years later, the private model in the cities of La Paz and El Alto encountered significant problems, culminating in the "Water War" and the subsequent exit of the private operator. This was immediately followed by a return to a remunicipalised public management model, raising expectations among the populations of both cities. The State emerged as the primary actor, gradually becoming the direct administrator of the utility, ultimately resulting in a process of statization and corporatisation of public management.
Different spaces in multilevel governance systems, especially cities, present opportunities for energy transition initiatives even while climate denialist administrations are in office at the level of the nation-state. By "fighting where the enemy isn't" in sub-national jurisdictions supportive of climate action, real gains can be made. The achievement of 100% renewable electricity in just ten years in Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, is an example. This was achieved despite Australia being governed by climate denialist governments nationally for most of that decade. Political leadership committed to 'learning by doing', wedded to explicit policy targets of escalating ambition, was key.
This article examines the remunicipalisation of Naples' water service to explain the outcomes of participatory governance experiments inspired by commons theory. Using process tracing and Fung's Democracy Cube, it analyses how participatory mechanisms were designed, contested and reconfigured within ABC Napoli. Based on interviews, documents and media, the findings show how legal constraints, political tensions, financial fragility and civil society-institution relationships shaped outcomes. Participatory forums evolved from open deliberation to consultative bodies with limited influence, failing to institutionalise civic participation. The study argues that both remunicipalisation and its participatory practices are hyper-local phenomena, shaped by specific contextual configurations rather than by theoretical models.
Changes in the provision of public services have been a topic of discussion in recent decades, encompassing both privatisation and, more recently, its reversal-as well as the influence of spatial inequalities and the role of different levels of government. This article analyses the conditions that have enabled the remunicipalisation or resistance to privatisation of essential public services by local governments in Argentina. Drawing on recent literature and a comparative analysis of three case studies, we identify several factors that have influenced the maintenance of public control over services by Argentine local governments.
Climate change requires us to fundamentally change the way we plan and develop our cities and regions. This raises questions about the role and capacity of spatial planning in general and the agency and expertise of planners in particular. Based on 27 qualitative interviews with Swedish planning professionals, we identify four key constraints: the increasing politicisation and complexity of planning practice, a cultivated practice of bypassing planners' expertise and a loss of control over their own professional sphere. Our findings suggest that the Swedish planning community is 'congealed' rather than agile when it comes to promoting zero-carbon cities and regions.
This paper employs cluster analysis to examine how interregional patient mobility, the level of health funding, and the public-private mix contribute to shaping territorial differences in health services in Italy. The findings indicate that these regional models reflect the country's longstanding economic divide between the North and the South. Rather than mitigating inequalities in access and opportunity, the current regional healthcare configurations appear to deepen territorial disparities. These results point to the need for more targeted central and public interventions to help reverse spatial inequalities.
Municipal councils all over Chile are increasingly adopting an unprecedented role in housing policy, challenging the country's prevailing neoliberal model. In this article, we analyse the district of Recoleta, whose municipal council is pioneering a 'fair rent' strategy that seeks to transform the housing supply model and the subjectivities of residents. Through its hybrid municipal management model, Recoleta is disputing the ownership-centric approach and promoting housing as a common good. In this article, we use documentary analysis and interviews to explore how this experience has reconfigured common perceptions of housing and presented new opportunities for social justice and gender equity.
We study how the privatisation of urban water is being challenged in Catalonia, which has a high proportion of private management and a high degree of monopolisation in the water contract market, compared to Spain. We use detailed and up-to-date municipal data to study the dynamics of monopolisation and remunicipalisation. We find that remunicipalisation, rather than potential competition for contracts, is a remedy against monopolisation. Inter-municipal cooperation in Catalonia facilitated the implementation of remunicipalisation in smaller municipalities. In addition, we analyse the democratisation of water management following remunicipalisation and find that progress was modest, both in Catalonia and in Spain.
