Urban Governance and Decision-making under Climate Change: a Critical Review of Frameworks, Methods and Tools from the Perspectives of Ecological Economics and Sustainability Science

Over the past 10-15 years, cities have emerged as clear leaders in global climate action. The wealth of frameworks, methods and tools aimed to support urban climate governance and decision-making have created a picture of progress on the topic, however, practical examples of success are limited to a limited group of forerunners. This research aims to address the gap between needs, theory and practice, by providing a critical review of the current developments from the lenses of sustainability science and ecological economics. Based on their integration, we developed ten minimum criteria for development and selection of actionable means: (1) legitimacy, salience and credibility; (2) consideration of social-ecological-economic dynamics; (3) critical pluralism; (4) inclusivity; (5) equality; (6) nexus; (7) transparency; (8) usability; (9) VUCA-fit; 10) transformative potential. The minimum criteria were used to assess 10 selected frameworks, 13 methods and 9 tools, providing decision-makers initial guidelines for making better choices. The analysis revealed that while comprehensive urban climate governance frameworks already exist, sophistication and usability of decision-support methods and tools require further work, while common reliance on simple means limits available opportunities. Thus, it is important to make multi-criteria, multi-objective, adaptive and robust approaches better accessible to urban decision-makers beyond the expert circles to support more effective climate action, while the suggested minimum criteria can be used to provide initial guidelines for such developments.

Urban Climate Governance Experimentation in Seoul: Science, Politics, or a Little of Both?

Cities are key in urban climate mitigation. Since the early 2000s, a trend of urban climate governance experimentation has been observed in which cities, and especially city governments, are trialing novel governance interventions, processes, and instruments to learn from their development and implementation. This article explores the role of the government of the city of Seoul, South Korea, in a range of local experiments. It particularly focuses on the factors that contribute to the success (or lack thereof) of urban climate governance experimentation. It finds that the city’s government has been successful in developing and trialing some but not all experiments and that the overall results of these are promising in certain areas of city development and use. The article also highlights some less promising results, indicating the fragile nature of urban climate governance experimentation—in both the scientific and political senses of the term.