The neoliberalisation of climate? Progressing climate policy under austerity urbanism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4910258 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul North (0000-0001-5147-7296, University of Liverpool, corresponding author), Peter North (0000-0001-9933-6935), Alex Nurse (University of Liverpool), Alexander Nurse (0000-0003-0325-4420, University of Liverpool), Tom Barker (0000-0001-7467-5850, Centre for Alternative Technology) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 1797-1815 |
| Publication date | 2017-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0308518x16686353 |
| OpenAlex | W2568279504 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 20 |
| References cited | 49 |
While the urban is identified as a productive site for addressing climate change, the 'post-political' critique dismisses climate policy as a vacuous discourse that obscures power relations and exclusion, defends the established neoliberal order, and silences challenges. This paper argues that rather than consensus, there is a conflict between urban climate policy and the need to reignite economic growth in the context of austerity urbanism, but also that we should not assume that challenges to neoliberal understandings of the 'sensible' will always be disregarded. Rather, urban climate policy can be progressed through partnership processes utilising 'co-production' techniques which entail significant agonistic, if not antagonistic, contestation. The argument is illustrated with a case study of climate policy making in the context of austerity urbanism in Liverpool, UK. While 'low carbon' is conceptualised by elite actors in Liverpool in neoliberal terms as a source of new low carbon jobs and businesses, with an emphasis on energy security and fuel poverty, this view is not unchallenged. The paper recounts how an ad hoc group of actors in the city came together to form a partnership advocating for more strategic decarbonisation, which should be progressed through a bid for the city to be European Green Capital. The disputes that emerged around this agenda suggest that in the context of austerity urbanism the need for cities to act to mitigate against dangerous climate change is not as uncontested as conceptions of the post-political suggest
Austerity · Economics · Economy · Fuel poverty · General partnership · Geography · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Urbanism · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance · Architecture
The Politics of Uncertainty
Playing games around climate change – new ways of working to develop climate change resilience
European Green Capital
Explaining emission reductions in cities
The resilience of urban entrepreneurialism
Understanding the science-policy interface in urban climate governance from a co-production perspective
Many roads to Paris
Austerity and sustainability
It’s all in the details
Giving the green light to sustainability
Climate adaptation under austerity
Narratives of vulnerability and resilience
City governments measuring their response to climate change
Locating climate adaptation in urban and regional studies
Politics, conflict and "political" community
The politics of community
Greenest cities? The (post-)politics of new urban environmental regimes
Mobilities, politics, and the future
Post-decisional logics of inaction
Urban sustainability policies in neoliberal Canada
Regime politics
Cities and Climate Change
The study of urban metabolism and its applications to urban planning and design
Partnership
Militant Liverpool
The History of Community Power
The Post-Political and Its Discontents
Cities and Climate Change
Why We Disagree about Climate Change
From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism
The Population Dynamics of Columnar and Other Cacti
Austerity urbanism
The ‘Liverpool model(s)’
A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities
The right stuff? informing adaptation to climate change in British Local Government
(De)politicising the local
Entrepreneurial urbanism
Recovering the politics of the city
A City Profile of Liverpool
Articulating Climate Justice in Copenhagen
The post-political trap? Reflections on politics, agency and the city
Unravelling the Process of 'Partnership' in Urban Regeneration Policy
Grassroots Localisation? The Scalar Potential of and Limits of the ‘Transition’ Approach to Climate Change and Resource Constraint
The Vicissitudes of Energy and Climate Policy in Stockholm
Low-carbon Transitions and the Reconfiguration of Urban Infrastructure
Progressive localism and the construction of political alternatives
Climate change and post-politics
Governance and regulation in local environmental policy
Eco-localisation as a progressive response to peak oil and climate change – A sympathetic critique
Climate, Carbon, and Territory
Transition Urbanism and the Contested Politics of Ethical Place Making
Capital of Culture—you must be having a laugh!’ Challenging the official rhetoric of Liverpool as the 2008 European cultural capital
Sub-national Responses to Climate Change in England
Urban development, collective consumption and the politics of metropolitan fragmentation
State modernisation and local strategic selectivity after Local Agenda 21
Geographies of responsibility
Reconfiguring environmental governance
An Economic Ethics for the Anthropocene
Knowledge exchange, 'impact' and engagement
The Work of Policy
Sustaining the unsustainable
Revisiting the urban politics of climate change
The Politics of Climate Activism in the UK
Illusions of Power
Apocalypse Forever
| Unique citing works | 20 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,22 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 20 |