Cities are recognized as an important scale for framing and implementing plans and policies for action on climate change. Within the structure of cities, it is in urban neighbourhoods that climate action becomes tangible and has the potential to engage communities. Despite its importance, scholarly literature has played limited attention to the scale of the neighbourhood as a site for locating climate action. The objective of our paper is to provide an overview of the role of neighbourhoods in leading bottom-up climate action and its implications for urban planning based on a qualitative scoping review. Our findings indicate that neighbourhoods are conceptualized as a physically bounded scale for climate action as well as a web of social networks and relationships enabling this action. Neighbourhood climate action aims to achieve neighbourhood scale sustainability and resilience by engaging with residents, municipalities, local academic institutions, neighbourhood associations and non-governmental agencies. Scholars engage with a wide range of concepts like place-based attachment and social mobilization as well as established practice-oriented tools in defining and measuring neighbourhood climate action. However, the neighbourhood scale struggles with limited resources and power in creating sustained climate action as well as in engaging with and addressing socio-economically marginalized communities.

Because of its location in the Indian Himalayas, the mountainous state of Uttarakhand is prone to multiple natural hazards and climate change extremes. At the same time, Uttarakhand is experiencing unprecedented population growth and undergoing rapid urbanization. Urban planning instruments like land use plans and building regulations allow disaster risk measures to be integrated in the rapidly emerging urban form. However, resources for formulating and implementing planning instruments might be limited in mountain urban centers. This paper takes stock of the risk addressed in the urban planning instruments at state and local levels through an analysis of land use plans and interviews with urban planning and disaster risk professionals. Results indicate that planning instruments are largely absent and do not sufficiently address urban risks. Lack of urban planning capacity at state and local levels, absence of local-level risk knowledge, and public pushback against introducing developmental regulations are identified as the primary constraints to addressing risk. We underline the urgent need to address risk in the urban development process and recommend broader engagement with universities and nongovernmental organizations to supplement existing knowledge and capacities.

Human settlements across the world are attempting to address climate change, leading to changing paradigms, parameters, and indicators for defining the path to future sustainability. In this regard, the term ecovillage has been increasingly used as models for sustainable human settlements. While the term is new, the concept is an old one: human development in harmony with nature. However, materially realizing the concept of an ecovillage is not without challenges. These include challenges in scaling up and transferability, negative regional impacts and struggles of functioning within larger capitalistic and growth-oriented systems. This paper presents the case of Auroville, an early attempt to establish an ecovillage in Southern India. We draw primarily from the ethnographic living and working experience of the authors in Auroville as well as published academic literature and newspaper articles. We find that Auroville has proven to be a successful laboratory for providing bottom-up, low cost and context-specific ecological solutions to the challenges of sustainability. However, challenges of economic and social sustainability compound as the town attempts to scale up and grow.Graphical abstract

Cities are emerging as key sites for action on climate change. Within cities, urban neighbourhoods are increasingly taking leadership in addressing local effects of climate change through mitigation and adaptation programs. Bottom-up action on climate change through neighbourhood scale programs presents opportunities in terms of getting the community to partner and participate in climate action. However, neighbourhood scale programs often run into challenges in terms of limited participation, impact and resources to keep the programs running. In this paper, we advance the literature on the opportunities and challenges of neighbourhood scale climate action. We do so by analysing three neighbourhood scale programs that address climate action in Canada and in Australia. We adopt online workshops as a research methodology where volunteers from the three programs share their experiences of opportunities and ways of overcoming challenges of neighbourhood climate action. Our findings illustrate that collaborative governance between the city and the neighbourhoods, incremental community building and consolidating local resources are important for advancing neighbourhood climate action. This paper adds to the thin body of knowledge on neighbourhood scale climate action and presents ways of overcoming the challenges of bottom-up climate action.

Cities are important partners in developing solutions towards a low-carbon pathway. However, given the variation in geography, a need exists to study urban energy transitions through a nuanced approach that addresses space- and place-based factors. Based on document analysis and interviews with municipal employees and local energy experts in Edmonton, Canada, we explore how location and availability of energy sources, political territoriality, physical urban landscapes and social embeddedness of fossil fuels influence municipal energy transition. Results illustrate that while Edmonton is shaped by its fossil fuel geography, it is actively carving out its low-carbon future through a geographically rooted transition strategy.