INTRODUCTION
Lead Editors:
Vanesa Castán Broto, Professor of Climate Urbanism, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield
Michele Acuto, Professor of Urban Resilience, University of Bristol
Sean Fox, Professor of Geography & Global Development, University of Bristol
Climate Urbanism, Resilience, and Justice forms a pivotal segment of the 2024 Call for Papers initiative being launched by Urban Studies. This initiative, known as Critical and Conceptual Advances in Urban Studies, aspires to be a catalyst for groundbreaking research and thought-provoking discussions that will shape the future of urban studies and contribute to the sustainable and equitable development of cities around the globe.
As a key part of this extensive initiative, the call for Climate Urbanism, Resilience, and Justice aims to advance theory, dialogue and debate at the intersection of the climate crisis, urban resilience, and the pressing need to create more equitable human settlements. We seek contributions that critically explore concepts, theories, discourses and narratives about the ways in which climate change is shaping lives in cities, and the new politics of climate action in the wake of increasingly interconnected questions of hazard, risk, resilience and justice in urban areas.
CLIMATE URBANISM, RESILIENCE AND JUSTICE
We invite papers that offer novel and disruptive thinking about the interplay between climate urbanism, resilience and justice against the backdrop of the climate crisis and calls for greater inclusion of voices, experiences and needs. This special issue seeks to foster new engagements, balancing deep and grounded case studies with a conceptually and theoretically ‘global urban theory’ appeal, including insights from cities in the Global South.
‘Climate urbanism’ explores the multiple ways in which climate change, as a massively distributed phenomenon, is transforming our relationships with the built environment. When examined in the context of rapid urbanization, growing inequalities, and the deepening of patterns of spatial differentiation across the world, climate urbanism can be read as a diagnosis of the new impositions that people face in urban environments.
Using this thematic focus, the Journal invites novel contributions that expand the current body of scholarship, but also contest it. We welcome papers that critically examine concepts and theories related to climate urbanism, resilience and justice, as well as those that interrogate climate change action discourses in cities and the diffusion of narratives of social change and resilience linked to calls for swift action in urban environments. We are particularly interested in papers that offer new ground in this field of research, whether this is because they expand the theoretical toolbox of the field, or because they engage with methods or empirical locations that can be rarely explored in the literature. We are particularly interested in topics including (but not limited to):
Climate urbanism theory has developed fundamentally as an extended critique of sustainable urbanism and a form of greenwashing (see Rice and Long, 2019). The influence of critical urban theory, especially notions of spatial injustice (Soja, 2009), green gentrification (Anguelovski et al, 2019), and the dispersion of environmental risks through knowledge technification (Goh, 2019) have led to the development of a body of theory that associate climate urbanism as a new manifestation of entrepreneurial models of urbanism.
References:
Anguelovski, I., Connolly, J.J., Garcia-Lamarca, M., Cole, H. and Pearsall, H., 2019. New scholarly pathways on green gentrification: What does the urban ‘green turn’ mean and where is it going? Progress in human geography, 43(6), pp. 1064-1086.
Goh, K., 2019. Urban waterscapes: The hydro‐politics of flooding in a sinking city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 43(2), pp. 250-272.
Long, J. and Rice, J.L., 2019. From sustainable urbanism to climate urbanism. Urban Studies, 56(5), pp. 992-1008.
Soja, E., 2009. The city and spatial justice. Justice spatiale/Spatial justice, 1(1), pp. 1-5.
The concept of differential human vulnerabilities has emerged to explain the uneven distribution of climate change impacts on individuals, households, communities and societies. In urban areas these vulnerabilities are influenced by characteristics of the built environment, social processes, and political/institutional structures (see Dodman et al, 2023). Improved understanding of how differential vulnerabilities intersect with patterns of uneven urban development has the potential to generate new knowledge of spatial injustices. We welcome both conceptual contributions and data-rich studies that document spatial differentiation of vulnerability across different forms of urbanisation. These will be particularly relevant for the forthcoming report of the IPCC on Cities and Climate Change, because of their potential to orient findings to address the drivers of climate injustices in urban areas.
Reference:
Dodman, D., Hayward, B., Pelling, M., Castán Broto, V., Chow, W., Chu, E., Dawson, R., Khirfan, L., McPhearson, T., Prakash, A. and Zheng, Y., 2022. Cities, Settlements and Key Infrastructure. In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Scholars seeking to reimagine the notion of climate urbanism away from their appropriation for green washing or the advancement of new forms of green entrepreneurialism have looked into alternative ways of thinking climate urbanism as a mode of looking at the city in a climate-changing world that engages with the transformative potential of place-based action (Robin and Castán Broto, 2021).
Reference:
Robin, E. and Castán Broto, V., 2021. Towards a postcolonial perspective on climate urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 45(5), pp. 869-878.
Climate and green gentrification have become powerful forms of discourse to demonstrate the complexity of climate urbanism but there is a need to build a body of evidence around these concepts, looking particularly at geographically differentiated trends, case studies that demonstrate the drivers and compound impacts of gentrification processes, the relationship between green and climate gentrification and parallel processes within the city, and the range of progressive responses that can counter gentrification.
While ideas of decolonization have gained popularity, there has been no systematic analysis of what they mean for climate urbanism. We welcome both conceptual discussions of decolonization in the context of climate change and empirical studies that tackle this epistemic frontier. There is indeed a tension between approaches that see climate urbanism as a manifestation of neo-colonial impulses, and those which see the challenges raised by climate change as an opportunity to develop alternative ways of thinking socio-ecological relations.
Gender justice and intersectionality offer new fresh perspectives from within which to approach climate urbanism and challenge neoliberal urbanism (McArdle 2021). Increasingly, urban approaches to climate change action emphasise the need to understand multiple subject positions and identify the drivers of discrimination that shape the urban experience. Queer approaches have furthermore signally the challenges embedded in current gender theorisation? Does an intersectional approach challenge current ideas of climate urbanism? What would be the principles of a unique queer feminist approach to climate urbanism? And do these approaches provide practical alternatives to current approaches of inclusive or justice-informed climate action planning?
Reference:
McArdle, R., 2021. Intersectional climate urbanism: Towards the inclusion of marginalised voices. Geoforum, 126, pp. 302-305.
Geographies of vulnerability and risk are significantly shaped by the interplay between urban climate adaptation governance on the one hand, and the economic and political drivers of urban development on the other (Eakin, Keele & Lueck 2022). With cities increasingly seen by international actors as “strategic arenas for climate change action” (Castán Broto 2017), a better understanding of how multiscalar interests, incentives and ideas interact to shape local outcomes is essential. We welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions that explore the political economy of adaptation/maladaption that advance the field.
References:
Castán Broto, V.C., 2017. Urban governance and the politics of climate change. World development, 93, pp. 1-15.
Eakin, H., Keele, S. and Lueck, V., 2022. Uncomfortable knowledge: mechanisms of urban development in adaptation governance. World development, 159, p. 106056.
At this junction in time a multiplicity of global discourses shape climate urbanism. From the wider United Nations-driven Agenda 2030 of the Sustainable Development Goals, blending inequalities and different types of sustainabilities, to global climate action discourses in and around the UNFCCC, or through sustainable development financing around the G7/G20 and the multilateral development banks, the ‘global’ debate and discourse requires unpacking. We will welcome conceptual discussions of these agendas, as well as practical case studies as to how global discourses shape on-the-ground urban realities.
Authors interested in contributing to this theme have two options for submission: 1) full-length paper submission or 2) abstract submission for prioritised assessment.
We strongly encourage authors to submit abstracts and papers before the suggested deadlines. We will process abstract and paper submissions as and when received. The invited full manuscript submissions will be prioritised during the internal screening and external review processes at the Journal to facilitate rapid response. In addition, unlike standard special issues that are published as a group when they are ready, the Journal is committed to the timely publication of the accepted papers under this call. The Journal will curate the accepted papers as an online collection and publish them individually in hardcopy as and when they are ready.
Full-Length Paper Submission
Urban Studies encourages researchers to respond to this call through existing paper submission mechanisms at the Journal as soon as possible if you have a full-length paper ready for submission. To do so:
- Submit your full-length paper by 20 September 2026 to Urban Studies via the ScholarOne portal.
- Your paper must be formatted according to our guidance here.
- Ensure your cover letter states that the submission is in response to the Climate Urbanism, Resilience and Justice call for papers.
- Tick the Special Issue category in both Step 1 and Step 5 on the ScholarOne submission form.
The standard peer-review process of the Journal will apply, including pre-screening by a theme lead. If the paper passes pre-screening, it will undergo review by external reviewers in the normal way.
Abstract Submission for Prioritised Assessment
We encourage researchers who are still in the process of data collection, analysis, and/or writing to submit an abstract of 500 words outlining your research by 20 March 2026 or earlier to our Editorial Office.
- Abstracts already received will be reviewed on a rolling basis and those selected for advancement to a full manuscript invitation will be informed by 20 April 2026 or earlier.
- If invited, the submission of the full manuscript will be due by 20 September 2026 or earlier. All invited manuscripts will be peer-reviewed following the standard USJ guidelines.
