Situating C40 in the Evolution of Networked Urban Climate Governance

Abstract

The responses by Acuto, Frantzeskaki, Gordon & Johnson, Pinault and Smeds all draw attention to the need to situate C40 in a wider political and economic context. Global city networks such as C40 facilitate, orchestrate, test and diffuse critical innovations for urban climate action through processes of experimentation. How these processes of on-the-ground experimentation in networked cities relate to global climate action and governance remains however poorly understood. Further research is needed to disclose and unpack the hidden politics, knowledge dynamics and institutional reconfigurations of such experiments curtailed by seemingly inclusive but rather opaque concepts such as living lab..