What Local Climate Change Plans Can Teach Us About City Power
LOCAL CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOCIETY, Mohamed Salih, ed. Routledge, 2012
27 Pages Posted: 24 Feb 2012
Date Written: February 22, 2012
Abstract
Scholarly analysis of city power in the United States has focused on how state and federal laws either impede or augment local autonomy vis-à-vis higher levels of government or other cities. City action on climate change provides a new perspective from which to view this question. Rather than inquiring into the city power relative to other governmental entities, one can investigate city power in relation to the object of regulation or plan goals. In other words, we can ask: "City power with regards to what?" A very small degree of relative power may have a substantial effect on a specific problem. In reviewing one study of climate change plans in London and Los Angeles, this Article argues that cities may turn out to be quite powerful in one realm despite being quite disempowered in another.
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