The resilience of urban entrepreneurialism: Challenging the ‘neoliberal turn’ of municipal climate planning

Abstract

This paper examines how municipal governments have organized to respond to the climate crisis, particularly how the creation and circulation of official climate plans has given rise to a shared narrative of urban resilience. By building on what McCann calls ‘definitional power’, this paper argues that this shared narrative is being exploited to open up profitable new market opportunities that allow municipalities to pursue continued economic growth while presenting local responses as necessary and desirable interventions in the face of climate disruptions. The first half of the paper situates the rise of resilience planning within patterns of urban entrepreneurialism similar to the earlier push on the part of municipalities to obtain ‘creative city’ or ‘smart city’ status. Drawing on the insights of key informants in New York City and Copenhagen, the second half of the paper examines how, by conflating resilience with green growth and the act of bouncing back, this narrative successfully narrows down complex socio-ecological analyses into a more manageable—thus easier to manipulate—idea of resilience, one that largely excludes and discounts local community needs and values. It concludes by arguing that issues of power, equity, and accountability cannot be divorced from any conversation about resilience, and should in fact be treated as integral to the process of achieving meaningful resilience outcomes.