The condition of urban climate experimentation

As the trend of urban climate experimentation continues, many accounts now seek to identify how it can be harnessed toward responses of sufficient scale and magnitude for the crises at hand. The imperative is to move beyond experimentation. Yet some authors now suggest that this may not be so straightforward for, they argue, we increasingly inhabit a condition of permanent experimentation. This article explores the roots of this condition within ecologically modernist governance, involving shifting dynamics of authority, the knowledge-policy relationship, addressing indeterminacy, and redefining progress in a climate-altered world. Experimentation represents a paradigm shift from established climate norms. Fundamentally, this line of thought means that it may neither be possible nor even desirable to abandon experimentation and to return to more centralized, controlled, and certain responses, for it is from within the difficulties of governing a climate-changing world through this paradigm that experimentation has arisen in the first place. The vital task is instead to understand the politics and possibilities of experimentation for progressive and just urban sustainability.

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15487733.2023.2188726