Metropolitan Geographies of US Climate Action: Cities, Suburbs, and the Local Divide in Global Responsibilities

Planning for climate change is now occurring at multiple, sometimes interlocking scales of ecological governance and policy formulation. Within the context of this journal's past calls for fresh work on the 'spatialities of (un)sustainability', particularly around climate action, this paper examines new geographies of local climate policy within six major US metropolitan regions located in six different smart growth states. The methodological assumption of the paper is that these putatively pro-planning states in the USA should provide a particularly fertile legal and policy arena within which metropolitan-scale action might emerge. Focusing empirically on the US Mayors Climate Action Agreement, though, the discussion highlights an uneven local geography of planning for global climate change, with central cities apparently accepting responsibility and, in general, suburban municipalities concomitantly free-riding. Policy and research implications of these metropolitan geographies of (in) action are discussed in light of the extant literature on cities, planning, and the governance of climate action.