The Right to the Actually Decarbonising City
Dr Will Brown — 24/01/2025
Across the globe 57% of us live in cities, a number estimated to reach over 70% by the end of this century. Yet, cities are responsible for an estimated 75% of global carbon emissions, with much of this being driven by the consumption patterns of those who live within them.
As we all know, cities are deeply complex, forever changing entities where seemingly well intentioned interventions can produce unexpected and sometimes undesirable outcomes. Therefore the task of reducing urban carbon emissions is not solely a techno-centric exercise grounded in the development of new efficient and sustainable technologies, but is one characterised by a range of barriers and limitations.
Ranging from considerations of political will and the desire to invest in reducing carbon emissions within an era of cost of living crises and austerity, to ethical concerns around governmental overreach into the lives of residents, the task of reducing a city’s carbon footprint is as complex as the city itself.
This is not even considering the seemingly basic task of understanding how much carbon is actually produced within the city. For a city to reduce its emissions, first those tasked with doing so obviously need to know how much carbon is produced in the first place. This process, known as carbon accounting, widely varies in terms of scope and quality, largely being dependent on the capacity of municipal departments and the funding underpinning them.
Actual Decarbonisation
The majority of cities across the globe cover scope 1 and 2 emissions, namely those directly produced within the city’s boundary and those produced through grid supplied electricity, with both scope 1 and 2 data often being produced through ‘downscaling’ national level emission inventories. Whilst this is an important step, it is limited in two key ways.
Firstly, as alluded to at the start of this piece, the majority of urban carbon emissions come from the consumption patterns of the city, which exist in the form of scope 3 emissions — those produced somewhere beyond the city boundary, but exist because of the city — with some estimating that over 80% of city emissions are produced in this way.
The second limitation lies in the geographic scale of the dataset. Whilst having city wide emission data is inherently useful, its application is limited in projects working to reducing carbon emissions. This is owing to the inability to accurately downscale national emission data to the neighbourhood or district level.
This is a particular concern given the propensity for municipalities to pursue projects based around neighbourhood or community regeneration: often revolving around the renovation and retrofit of housing stock to improve energy efficiency, the use of alternative electricity sources (solar or wind power), encouraging active travel and reduced car use and the planting and cultivation of urban greening to store and absorb carbon emissions.
Owing to this misalignment of informative emission data and neighbourhood based practice to prove the effectiveness of an intervention or action, such projects are, therefore, often grounded in assumptions and educated guesses around the effectiveness of their actions. With reliable insights and knowledge of the emission reduction potential of an intervention this is not necessarily an issue, however, throughout my time researching urban decarbonisation and working with city authorities on carbon neutrality projects, often the effectiveness of an approach is assumed to be more efficient than it is in reality.
Therefore, for actually existing urban decarbonisation, accurate, contextually relevant emission data is essential. The difficulty lies in the development and adoption of new methods to conduct such carbon accounting. However this is a topic for another time, as I wish to expand into another concern.
Neighbourhood Projects and Decarbonisation
Neighbourhoods, and the boundaries demarcating them, are not solely another means of sectioning the city down to smaller chunks. Rather, a neighbourhood is as much defined by the community or communities contained within, as its built environment or its geographic scale. Therefore, any project operating at the neighbourhood level, regardless of its intent or focus, is operating within an inherently social context. This is particularly acute given the common connection between neighbourhood regeneration and retrofitting taking place with deprived communities.
Whilst the drive to improve the energy efficiency of buildings or the creation of more green spaces and cycle paths in the pursuit of carbon neutrality should be lauded, there are potential negative impacts associated with them. A notable one is the spectre of gentrification, with the above actions all having the potential to drive up property values in the area concerned, alluding to the ‘rent-gap’ hypothesis of Neil Smith, where the gap between the current value of a location and the potential value of it drives investment and subsequent displacement of residents.
In my mind, such concerns are entirely legitimate and need to be considered when operating at the neighbourhood level. Yet, reducing housing energy consumption, particularly heating fuel consumption, is an important component of driving down urban carbon emissions.
Therefore, the question is how to conduct socially just and equitable urban decarbonisation which actually reduces carbon emissions, but does so without turfing out the original residents. This is an interesting point given the clear link between higher wealth and higher carbon footprints meaning that if a city’s actions to reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions in a neighbourhood result in the gentrification of it, the increase in scope 3 consumption emissions may end up increasing the carbon footprint of the neighbourhood, and the city as a whole.
Once again, I find myself turning towards the work of Henri Lefebvre to approach this fundamental question.
The Right to the City
Alongside Lefebvre’s work on the social production of space and his research into rythmanalysis, he is perhaps best known for his concept the right to the city. To very briefly summarise, this right is grounded in the notion that the inhabitants of a city are able to shape it in their own image, driving the development of their community from the bottom-up, not from the top-down through the whims and grand plans of capital and over zealous city authorities.
Whilst the ‘right to the city’ is an abstract notion, one which will differ from context to context (even within the same city or neighbourhood) it is imbued with a key characteristic which, I argue is essential for effective urban decarbonisation: the ability of residents to steer actions taking place within their communities. This is bound in two elements, with the first being a simple moral/ethical argument, namely, those who are being negatively or positively impacted by an action should be the ones in place to guide it’s implementation. The second, more practical consideration, is the in depth knowledge residents possess about their communities.
Time and time again, throughout my research it is proven to me that those who live within a community or neighbourhood are the ones who know the most about it. This may appear to be obvious, but situated, bottom-up knowledge is often poorly utilised within neighbourhood level projects — either through ineffective community engagement, an overreliance on highly informed and well connected residents (who are often older, wealthier and in many cases, whiter than the majority of other residents) or a complete negligence of community input.
This insight is essential in actually reducing urban carbon emissions, for given the fact that the majority of urban emissions emanate from consumption, their reduction is largely contingent upon changes in resident mindsets and behaviours — which is very difficult to do. To this end, decarbonisation must be seen as a legitimate course of action in the eyes of residents. The issue is, despite the urgency of reducing carbon emissions, decarbonisation is not, on the whole, seen as a vote winner — as can be observed with the unfortunate success of populist parties across the first four years of this decade, each connected through the repellent scourge of climate change scepticism and even out right denial.
Kevin Lo, an academic from Hong Kong Baptist University, made an interesting point around this in 2014, namely, that
Because climate change is conventionally perceived as related to problems of collective action between nation-states and supranational institutions, framing climate change as a local issue and bundling it with the existing set of policies can help municipal governments gain political support
This notion of ‘bundling’ is essential in driving actually existing urban decarbonisation. Whilst reducing carbon emissions and combatting climate change is a broadly common concern amongst voters, it is often trumped by other concerns, chiefly the cost of living. This prioritisation of concerns will vary from community to community and from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. Lo cites reducing urban pollution, enhancing economic growth and urban regeneration as examples of effective bundling approaches.
It is here where I see the right to the city being of significant value. For by understanding what initiatives to ‘bundle’ decarbonisation with, by collaborating with and supporting local communities, a city authority who is seeking to reduce the city’s carbon footprint simultaneously attains the legitimacy to conduct such actions, whilst enabling the residents the ability to shape the city in line with their interests.
However, before we get carried away and propose that city authorities should cede all power to the community level, creating an anarcho-communist utopia in the process, it is important to note that such community driven decarbonisation must be effective; by which I mean the carbon emissions are accurately accounted for and the actions involved are proven to reduce emissions. The neglection of this could very easily end up producing a form of community legitimated greenwashing.
Yet, the skills required to conduct such carbon accounting are often beyond the time, financial and personal capacities of often overstretched municipal climate departments. Therefore, collaborations with academia will most likely be required to assess the effectiveness of an action or project. Another collaboration to consider would be with the private sector who would provide the materials to conduct any physical changes within a project — an embodiment of the quadruple-helix innovation model.
So what is being proposed here is a broad outline of an approach to improving urban decarbonisation. It is rooted in the right to the actually decarbonising city, here defined as
the right for residents and communities to influence the effective, actual decarbonisation of their city or neighbourhood whilst best reflecting their own interests
This is not rooted in the simplistic narrative of power devolution (because to do so would not address the complexities of effectively reducing urban carbon emissions), but rather, the establishment of better collaboration between community and municipality, based on the combination of community level insights and knowledge with evidence based actions, all in the name of driving down carbon emissions and reducing the impact of cities on planetary climate change.
Conclusion
It’s perhaps obvious to point out that all the above is theoretical, and the significant complexities of cultivating and enforcing a right to the actually decarbonising city have not been unpacked or deeply explored here. But, that’s not the point of this essay. Rather, this essay has been written to highlight a potential avenue to explore, an abstract end goal to cultivate just urban decarbonisation, whilst simultaneously introducing a selection of the challenges facing municipalities and those who live within them today:
- The lack of capacity to conduct truly accurate carbon accounting
- The misalignment of emission data and projects
- The negative impacts of urban decarbonisation on residents
- The limited impact residents can have on the trajectory of their cities and neighbourhoods
- The prioritisation of climate change with other challenges facing cities and residents
- The challenges of working across disciplines and organisations
Ultimately, the more research is conducted looking into these challenges, the further down the road we will be towards better, more impactful urban decarbonisation.
I would argue that like most complex things, the secret to better decarbonisation lies in better collaboration, and the right to the actually decarbonising city is one approach to support this.
Dr Will Brown
Research Associate in Urban Systems and Carbon Mangement
University of Cambridge
Wghb2@cam.ac.uk
