The processes and practices of sustainable cities

As concentrations of population and consumption, cities are fundamental to the sustainable transition that is urgently needed to resolve the ecological crisis we are facing. Cities have responded to this challenge with a large number committing to sustainable visions and/or initiatives such as the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM), C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group or ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability network. Whilst there are pockets of best practice we are not seeing the speed or scale of change required in terms of resource use, carbon emissions or well-being. There is an implementation gap between cities’ long-term sustainable visions and the short-term actions realised to achieve them; cities are struggling to achieve long-term goals in the face of short-term pressures.

To accelerate sustainable urban transitions a greater understanding of the regime-level processes that enable or constrain translation between long-term visions and short-term action is required. Transition research to date has neglected regime processes, especially non-technical institutional processes and cultural-cognitive habits and heuristics, as well as the role of power and agency. This thesis aims to critically explore the processes of regime-level change to gain insights into how urban transitions occur and under what circumstances they can be accelerated. To achieve this a novel analytical framework is proposed, with transition theory as the foundation, additionally drawing on institutional and quasi-evolutionary theory. This framework is tested using three leading sustainable cities case studies, London, New York and Copenhagen, including interviews with sustainable city network actors. Analysis using the framework generates important insights into how urban transitions might be steered and accelerated. In particular that normative institutional processes are an effective means for regime actors to coordinate power, affect resource allocation, and impact selection pressures and adaptive capacity. The findings suggests that unless the institutional and quasi-evolutionary processes that drive action are re-configured in line with sustainable city visions then progress will be limited.