Just urban transitions require locally tailored policies and actions designed to navigate low-carbon transitions at a city and town scale. Like just transitions, generally understood at a country scale, these policies and actions must be designed to manage the individual, household and community vulnerability and challenging tradeoffs that arise in the process of transformation away from fossil fuel dependency, toward a low-carbon economy.
To achieve just urban transitions, both the outcomes and the processes of the low-carbon transformation need to meet collective understandings of justice, encompassing considerations of fairness, equity, and representation.
Thinking and working at the urban scale is essential for more resilient and lower-carbon modes of social organisation. All international and national just transition policies and plans need to respond to local contexts if they are to be implementable.
Cities and towns are increasingly seen as central to successful responses to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The local governments that govern these urban centres are recognised, internationally, as uniquely positioned to understand and respond to climate change and transition-related risks. As countries navigate the global transition to lower carbon economies, there is a range of challenges and opportunities that will be realised at the urban scale.
What are Just Urban Transitions
