Resilient climate urbanism and the politics of experimentation for adaptation

ABSTRACT

Cities are increasingly pursuing actions to become more resilient in the face of climate change and to seize related economic growth opportunities. Recent contributions have argued that “climate urbanism” is emerging as a hegemonic trend that is structuring climate adaptation with a focus on the selective securing of vital infrastructure for growth, promoting an apolitical vision of resilience and exacerbating inequalities. Developing situated understandings of these dynamics and their contestation seems key. We analyse this trend of climate urbanism in a specific setting of climate adaptation experiment: living labs. We investigate and intervene on two key processes of the politics of climate experimentation – making for compelling urban projects and focusing on infrastructure reconfiguration – whereby living labs could challenge or, conversely, amplify negative trends of climate urbanism. Our research in Montreal shows the value of understanding the subjectivities of the practitioners involved and the fields of political struggles where adaptation lands. Although the negative trends of climate urbanism appear very resilient and living labs have important limitations, we believe they can be used to muddle through pathways for more debates, equity and justice in climate adaptation.

KEYWORDS:

• climate urbanism
• climate adaptation
• governance experiments
• urban living lab
• infrastructure
• climate equity

Acknowledgements

We warmly thank all participants to the living lab for their time and commitment, as well as students, professors, partners and friends in the Labo Climat Montréal. We also wish to thank the anonymous referrees for their insightful comments. This research has been reviewed and approved by the INRS Ethics in research committee (CER-19-510).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The number of days above 30°C per year is expected to triple from 2040 to 2070 compared with the 1980–2010 period, going from 19 days to 30 fifth by 2050 (medium scenarios, Ouranos, 2023).

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the funding from Ouranos (via the Quebec governement's Climate Change Action Plan 2013-2020), the City of Montreal, Mitacs Acceleration, SSHRC institutional grant and the Canada Research Chair in Urban Climate Action (950-232808).