This project aims to understand how facing the climate crisis is shifting the governance of urban areas. Specifically, it will examine ‘participatory’ forms of urban climate governance, aiming to understand whether they are being used as an instrumental means to tackle the crisis, or as an opportunity for more transformative reimaginations of the ways that our urban areas can be governed. In this way, this project aims to understand some of the openings and tensions which the climate crisis presents to contemporary democratic structures. It aims to do so through an examination of the (mundane) practices of governance; the meeting halls, consultations, stakeholder engagement sessions, and protests which may accompany the implementation of new climate-focussed projects. Doing so will allow this project to think through some of the ways which new objects and publics are called into being by, and linked to the governance of, the climate crisis.
