| Title |
Greening cosmopolitan urbanism? On the transnational mobility of low-carbon formats in Northern European and East Asian cities |
| ID_Doc |
32666 |
| Authors |
Blok, A |
| Title |
Greening cosmopolitan urbanism? On the transnational mobility of low-carbon formats in Northern European and East Asian cities |
| Year |
2012 |
| Published |
Environment And Planning A-Economy And Space, 44, 10 |
| DOI |
10.1068/a44559 |
| Abstract |
This paper engages key social theories of transnational mobilities in order to forge the concept of urban 'green' cosmopolitization, posited as a social scientific contribution to epochal conversations on climate change. Bringing Ulrich Beck's notion of 'cosmopolitization' to bear on recent work around 'urban policy mobilities', I analyze professional planning practices in large-scale world cities as privileged sites for contemporary imaginings and material implementations of low-carbon sociotechnical change. Focusing on the regions of Europe and Asia, I show how specific policies and technologies of urban greening circulate in intercity sustainability networks. These networks, I suggest, serve to organize processes of professional engagement with climate change around notions of innovation, learning, and 'best practice' policy transfer among urban professionals-thereby also excluding more 'radically' alternative futures. The paper then turns to explore how such green cosmopolitization works as a social force within specific urban localities, employing two ethnographic case studies into 'ambitious' low-carbon planning projects in Copenhagen and Kyoto, respectively. In particular, my analysis explores how place-based notions of 'culture' are mobilized in the urban visions of architects and engineers as resources for addressing global environmental risks. These spaces of urban green cosmopolitization, I conclude, emerge at the intersection of professional and vernacular ethico-political attachments, thereby reworking-in often contentious ways-how particular urban materials and spaces can be understood in reference to an emerging moral geography of shared climatic risks. |
| Author Keywords |
urban policy mobilities; climate change; green cosmopolitization; world city networks; place-based eco-identities |
| Index Keywords |
Index Keywords |
| Document Type |
Other |
| Open Access |
Open Access |
| Source |
Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) |
| EID |
WOS:000311461600004 |
| WoS Category |
Environmental Studies; Geography |
| Research Area |
Environmental Sciences & Ecology; Geography |
| PDF |
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