Kate Theobald

Governing sustainable cities

Based upon a 3 year research project funded by the European Commission’s FP5 programme (DISCUS EVK4-CT-2001-00065), this book reports on the results of a study of local sustainable development processes and outcomes in 40 cities across Europe. It has been widely quoted and has considerable significance for practice, policy and research. Evans has been invited to speak to its themes and conclusions in the USA, Japan, China. South Africa, and in many European countries.

Environmental Governance and Transnational Municipal Networks in Europe

The nature of environmental governance within Europe is increasingly considered to be multilevel – involving actors and institutions at local, national and international levels, and from public, private and civil society spheres. One interesting feature of the development of multilevel governance is the emergence of transnational municipal networks (TMNs). This article examines why and how TMNs have emerged in the arena of European environmental governance, and the ways in which they can be conceptualised. Some specific examples of TMNs concerned with urban sustainable development are examined in order to explore the structure and capacity of networks, the development of new forms of governance within such networks, and the nature of co-operation and competition between governments and networks. From these preliminary analyses, three key themes relating to the role of such networks in environmental governance emerge: the impact of networks on policy making; their influence in multilevel governance; and issues of representation and legitimacy. In the final section, issues for future research are considered.

Resilient local government and climate change interventions in the UK

This article aims to critically review the concept of resilience and to assess how it might be used both to understand and to evaluate local government responses to climate change. The relevance of the resilience agenda is located in the growing sense of uncertainty in the face of external economic and environmental “shocks”. In the UK, in particular, the challenges of tackling climate change, responding to economic recession and introducing major cuts in public expenditure provide an appropriate context within which the utility of the resilience agenda can be examined. In emphasising the transformational view of resilience as “bouncing forward” – as opposed to that of recovery or “bouncing back” – the article highlights a number of features that could characterise a resilient local government approach to both mitigating and adapting to climate change. In acknowledging the emergence of a number of features of local resilience, the article concludes by considering how such an agenda can be further developed by local government. A key question that remains is the extent to which the local creativity, innovation and risk-taking needed for resilience can be developed given the economic and political constraints confronting local government in the UK.

Urban wind power and the private sector: community benefits, social acceptance and public engagement

Given the ambitious government targets for renewable energy generation in the UK, there has been a push by government and industry towards various types and scales of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs). This paper explores the implications of commercial urban wind projects for local communities, drawing on a case study of proposals by ASDA to construct wind turbines in two semi-urban locations in the UK. The paper argues that community responses to the proposals were complex and varied and could not adequately be encapsulated by ‘nimby’ (not in my back yard) assignations. It concludes that while ASDA followed a process of consulting local people, this process highlighted the problems of the ‘business as usual’ approach to public engagement employed by ASDA, and assumptions made about public acceptance of RETs.

Public engagement with information on renewable energy developments: The case of single, semi-urban wind turbines

This paper explores perceptions of public engagement with information on renewable energy developments. It draws on a case study of proposals by a major supermarket chain to construct single wind turbines in two semi-urban locations in the UK, analysing data from interviews with key actors in the planning process and focus groups with local residents. The paper concludes that key actors often had high expectations of how local people should engage with information, and sometimes implied that members of the public who were incapable of filtering or processing information in an organised or targeted fashion had no productive role to play in the planning process. It shows how the specific nature of the proposals (single wind turbines in semi-urban locations proposed by a commercial private sector developer) shaped local residents’ information needs and concerns in a way that challenged key actors’ expectations of how the public should engage with information.

Creating low-carbon neighbourhoods: a critical discourse analysis:

A number of contributions have analysed or supported community or neighbourhood-level activities connected with the development of sustainable or low-carbon localities. The paper reports on a recently completed project (Newcastle Low Carbon Neighbourhoods). The paper aims to deepen understanding of problems relating to the creation of low-carbon neighbourhoods, focusing on competing discourses, which tend to marginalise residents. The paper shows that there is the potential to employ critical discourse analysis to probe the inclusivity or exclusivity of social and political actors and agenda, and the story sets, texts and practices capable of binding together, or keeping apart, individuals, groups and perspectives, and to examine the normative underpinnings of people’s behaviour and interpretations. The conclusions concern what we learn from the project regarding the role of language in multi-actor research and engagement and the promotion of low-carbon homes and neighbourhoods, which may be informative for the broader challenge of city-wide urban sustainability.