Climate Change, Urban Responses and Sociospatial Transformations: The Example of Quebec City

Abstract

The growing involvement of cities in the fight against climate change is probably one of the most significant features of today’s environmental governance. Beyond contributing to mitigation and adaptation efforts, urban climate action also helps in understanding how urban societies and spaces are being transformed in a context of global environmental change. This paper looks in particular at these sociospatial transformations, by presenting an empirical research on Quebec City’s climate policy. Since 2004, Quebec City has implemented various mitigation initiatives, but without being able to reduce its emissions. In fact, its policy approach has been mainly symbolic and has not encouraged the institutionalization of the climate issue in planning and governance practices. The case of Québec City shows that climate change is contributing to the renewal of environmental policies, but it also highlights the difficulty of decarbonizing urban socio-technical systems that have mainly developed around automobility.