The Politics of Urban Climate Change Policy

Urban politics research has not kept pace—empirically or theoretically—with city governments’ engagement with climate change policy. Thousands of cities globally have made commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and are taking steps toward these goals. In the United States, research has examined the motivations for such actions and has described some of the implementation challenges cities are encountering, but we lack a theoretically informed understanding of how these actions intersect politically with existing interests, institutions, and fiscal realities in cities. This article identifies five political entry points that are specific to urban climate change policy and can provide a foundation for empirically and theoretically valuable research. The pursuit of such an interdisciplinary urban research agenda for climate change would enhance our understanding of when and how cities are successful in addressing climate change and would provide new answers to long-standing questions in urban politics.