City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

involves a wide range of institutions, social interests, technologies, policy interventions, experiments, and financial mechanisms configured in many ways. It requires central leadership by city leaders, and the intermediary organisations they mobilise or create to translate the plan into practice. In undertaking transitions, representatives of cities often seek to lead by example with the opportunities this affords them through the city’s property portfolio, vehicles and policy instruments. Further capacity must be developed and engaged to undertake an effective transition, including the role of national governments or their agencies as funders of transition initiatives and as legislators and regulators – usually the setters of standards and codes. It also includes roles for international organisations and networks, such as the C40 League of Cities, and for academics and other public agencies, with private businesses providing contexts for technological development and innovation, the production of green products and the implementation of technologies and services. Utilities, i.e. the existing providers of energy, water and transport resources, are important interests both in terms of their existing assets and their organisational connections to households and businesses, but also to the extent that as institutions they are adaptable and can (potentially) engage with the city’s transition. Yet in many conventional systemic urban transitions, a gap separates the strategic visions prepared by coalitions of city, private, and utility interests from the general public. Even in Transition Towns and localisation movements that have significant, fundamental local deliberation, the connections between this local capacity and formal city, private, and utility interests are often weak and poorly developed.

vulnerabilities by building resilience to the challenges posed by climate change. The response of individual cities usually involves a suite of ambitious targets and technologies to address these multiple issues. By 2006, San Jose’s carbon emission figures were still high relative to California’s carbon emission reduction targets, and city leaders were growing concerned that it was 'falling behind'. The response was to reduce carbon emissions significantly through the development, commercialisation and implementation of cleaner forms of technology. The 2007 Green Vision for the city was based on 10 goals that had the aim of making the city the “world capital of clean technology innovation and leader of urban sustainability”. Alternatives to these exemplary modes of systemic urban transition are being developed by localisation groups that may question the premise of more growth and an intensification of economic competition between places. Rather they promote plans for a different type of society and economy that requires less dependency on current resources through, for example, the development by Transition Towns of 15-20 year Energy Descent Action Plans (EDAPs) that are locally specific working plans for moving towards a robust, sustainable, energy efficient urban future. Both dominant and alternative approaches to systemic urban transitions are long-term in their aims and aspirations. For cities this can mean plans and roadmaps that may have 2020 or 2050 as their target. Similarly, the Transition Towns approach is not prescriptive and rigid in its timeframes; rather the expectation is that the development and realisation of an EDAP is long- term and likely to take around 15 years. These plans remain dynamic documents. Melbourne’s plan, for example, was published in 2003 and updated in 2008. Other plans are considered as broad statements that are expected to be revised in the light of changing circumstances.

6.5.3. Responses and outcomes

The possibilities and constraints in systemic urban transition through leading by example can be seen in interventions that have been subject to assessment or evaluation. Melbourne, for example, recorded a 41% reduction in city operation emissions between

6.5.2. Intermediaries involved

Converting the targets and plans for systemic urban transition into reality is complex, dynamic and takes place over a long period of time. It

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