Urban environment and decorbonization

In my work on urban environment and decarbonisation policy I focused on how a Swedish municipality dealt with their decarbonisation policy and followed the various infrastructures that were engaged in the process. My research showed how, first, part of policymaking is to contend with and bring together very different elements (e.g. low-carbon mobility initiatives, private companies, municipal transport system) to work for one policy initiative. Second,  cultivating relations within and outside the municipality offices allows project managers and climate planners to form trusted networks that become especially instrumental towards making and implementing policy. Finally, planners find themselves unmaking and remaking target groups to produce coherent and effective policies. In the same municipality, one of the infrastructure that was experimented with was a privately developed dashboard that promises reliable and actionable transition plans towards decarbonisation. Altogether these elements show how decarbonisation policy is an ever evolving assembling process, which - while led by the goal of carbon emission reduction - often benefits from serendipitous moments and kaleidoscopic bricolages of different elements.

Photo taken by the author (c).