Cities and climate governance.
From experimental initiatives
to reshaping urban
development.
Matthew Paterson, University of Ottawa
Research on cities/climate
change
Transnational city networks
Experimental governance
Aim: to focus more on question of urban political
economy and development: drivers of emissions and
enduring contradictions
Ontario’s GHG emissions
The question of density
Density is key to urban energy use and thus GHG emissions
Density determines:
Proportion of journeys made not in a car (key determinant of
transport emissions)
Note: much more important than the fuel economy of individual
vehicles: a dense urbanite SUV owner who never drives has much
lower emissions than a suburbanite Civic owner
Density has big influence on:
House size (key determinant of household energy use)
Housing type (row houses for e.g. much lower energy use than
single houses)
Source: Derived from P. Newman & J. Kenworthy, Sustainability and Cities, Island
Press, 1999. This version available at: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/kenworthy
The question of density
Density is key to urban energy use and thus GHG emissions
Density determines:
Proportion of journeys made not in a car (key determinant of
transport emissions)
Note: much more important than the fuel economy of individual
vehicles: a dense urbanite SUV owner who never drives has much
lower emissions than a suburbanite Civic owner
Density has big influence on:
House size (key determinant of household energy use)
Housing type (row houses for e.g. much lower energy use than
single houses)
Source: http://www.cities21.org/HH_NRG_consumption.htm
Low carbon city as transformation
of urban development
North American urban context
Increased density as key device for low carbon
transitions
Already widely established as planning goal, even
without climate/carbon as specific driver (increasingly
in urban plans, but not yet a ‘driver’ in many places)
Highly contested process when new buildings proposed
Useful site to explore character of conflicts – values,
desires, fears, etc invoked both for and against
intensification
Intensification conflicts
Research ongoing in Ottawa, preliminary results
Conflicts concentrated in urban core
Significant urban-suburban conflict
Political economy of intensification is the same as the
political economy of sprawl
Competing visions of intensification
Le Corbusier vs Jane Jacobs
Ambivalence. Those who most consistently oppose
intensification are those who most consistently are in favour
of low carbon development
Percentage of projects per Ward
Somerset
26%
Rideau-Vanier
13%
RideauRockcliffe
6%
Beacon HillCyrville
5%
Capital
10%
Kanata North
3%
Kanata South
3%
Kitchissippi
19%
Intensification conflicts
Research ongoing in Ottawa, preliminary results
Conflicts concentrated in urban core
Significant urban-suburban conflict
Political economy of intensification is the same as the
political economy of sprawl
Competing visions of intensification
Le Corbusier vs Jane Jacobs
Ambivalence. Those who most consistently oppose
intensification are those who most consistently are in favour
of low carbon development
Conclusions
Centrality of cities in climate policy
Control over key policy levers
Particular types of challenges
Cultural
Urban development models and political-economic
relations
Experiments important but attention to contradictions
also important