Progress in Urban Environmental Politics? A review of post-pandemic urban climate governance

Keywords: COVID-19, climate change, governance, cities, sustainable development, urban planning
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

The implications of COVID-19 for urban planning are wide ranging, and have triggered a rethinking of how policies related to housing, transportation, sustainability, climate change and governance might be redeveloped to be better suited for post-pandemic cities. As infectious disease is now largely an urban issue given the increased prevalence and severity of outbreaks in cities, urban governance institutions and policies are central into shaping future public health policy. Cities and regions are also at the center of climate and sustainable development interventions. Over the past two years, both academic and popular accounts have highlighted commonalities between adaptations that cities are making to become more resilient to infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19, while also addressing sustainable development and climate change indicators and goals (Acuto et al., 2020; Sharifi and Khavarian-Garmsir, 2020). However, as various scholars have observed, there is, as of yet, no consensus on the practical steps required to rethink the material production of the city, nor on how reconfiguring extant modes of transportation, commerce and leisure might help to create more sustainable, climate resilient and healthy cities (Parnell, 2020). As such, our paper aims to investigate the commonalities and tensions that exist between post-pandemic planning and climate change interventions as a means to shed new light on emergent types of governance interventions needed to understand the discursive and spatial materiality of the post-pandemic city. Our findings are based on a review of the academic literature on this topic and review of reports from supranational governance organizations.