New book: Mainstreaming on Climate Change in Urban Development

A new book entitled Mainstreaming Climate Change in Urban Development: Lessons from Cape Town, edited by Dianne Scott, Helen Davies and Mark New, has just been published by the University of Cape Town Press. The book was produced as part of the Mistra Urban Futures Cape Town Local Interaction Platform’s Knowledge Transfer Programme. The book examines initiatives at the local government level, across a range of departments, from environmental resource management to housing, stormwater management, water management, energy management and spatial planning.

In addition, it records the progress made and challenges faced in mainstreaming climate change into urban policies, processes, programmes and practices, a problem facing most urban areas around the world. The chapters of the book were co-written by practitioners from the City of Cape Town and academic researchers from a range of disciplines, including economists, engineers, ecologists, geographers and urban planners.  This transdisciplinary co-production process, where practitioner experience is coupled with an academic and research perspective, has produced an ‘insider’ view of urban development and climate change governance through the lens of theory. The result provides new practice-based knowledge for policy-making in the transition towards more sustainable cities in the face of climate change, particularly those in the global South.

Cape Town’s drought crisis grabbed global headlines in 2018 and its causes and solutions were – and continue to be — hotly debated. But managing water shortages and other climate change impacts have been integrated into the city’s urban policy-making for some time, in response to rapid urbanisation and uncertainty about the exact nature, timing and magnitude of city-scale climatic changes. Capetown platform launches a book which presents initiatives at the local government level, across a range of departments, from environmental resource management to housing, stormwater management, water management, energy management and spatial planning.