Author
Listed:
- Helen Traill
(University of Glasgow, UK)
- Andrew Cumbers
(University of Glasgow, UK; University of Bonn, Germany)
Abstract
This article critically interrogates the over-emphasis upon urban solutions when considering complex and multi-scalar energy infrastructures that must transition to low-carbon intensity for a sustainable future. While urban actors can play an important role in energy transition, their interventions are riven with difficulties, and at times failure, as they encounter challenges of politics, capacity and agency in a broader and multi-scalar governance landscape. Drawing upon the comparative and variegated political economies of energy infrastructure governance in Germany and the UK, this article makes three critical arguments. Firstly, it contends that patterns of ownership of key infrastructures, particularly in the highly privatised context of the UK but also in Germany’s more diversified energy market, trouble urban-level interventions. Secondly, against a backdrop of post-financial crash austerity, we raise the issue of capacity at an urban level, principally concerning the financing and technical administration of urban infrastructural ‘solutions’. Thirdly, the entrenched politics of neoliberalisation, its multi-scalar articulations and in particular discourses of marketisation and competition, while distinct across the two contexts, shape the possibilities, imaginaries and support available for local-level change in complex infrastructures. The article points to differential urban capacities and governance conditions that require a greater degree of nuance in sustainability narratives, and a critical conversation around the need for multi-scalar coordination in energy transitions, in order to avert catastrophic climate breakdown.
Suggested Citation
Helen Traill & Andrew Cumbers, 2025.
"The limits to the urban within multi-scalar energy transitions: Agency, infrastructure and ownership in the UK and Germany,"
Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 62(9), pages 1808-1825, July.
Handle:
RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:62:y:2025:i:9:p:1808-1825
DOI: 10.1177/00420980241228467
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:62:y:2025:i:9:p:1808-1825. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.