Cities, Networks, and Global Environmental Governance: Spaces of Innovation, Places of Leadership(Cities and Global Governance)

As a result of global dynamics—the increasing interconnection of people and places—innovations in global environmental governance haved altered the role of cities in shaping the future of the planet. This book is a timely study of the importance of these social transformations in our increasingly global and increasingly urban world. Through analysis of transnational municipal networks, such as Metropolis and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Sofie Bouteligier's innovative study examines theories of the network society and global cities from a global ecology perspective. Through direct observation and interviews and using two types of city networks that have been treated separately in the literature, she discovers the structure and logic pertaining to office networks of environmental non-governmental organizations and environmental consultancy firms. In doing so she incisively demonstrates the ways in which cities fulfill the role of strategic sites of global environmental governance, concentrating knowledge, infrastructure, and institutions vital to the function of transnational actors.

Table of Contents:
1: Introduction. 2: City Networks for Global Environmental Governance. 3: Networks, Global Cities, and Environmental Flows. 4: Methodology. 5: City Networks and Innovative Global Environmental Governance. 6: City Networks and Conventional Global Environmental Governance. 7: Conclusion: A Networked Urban World as Vehicle for Environmental Sustainability

About the Author :
Sofie Bouteligier conducted her PhD research at the Global Environmental Governance and Sustainable Development Research Group of Kuleuven, Belgium. Currently, she is a postdoc researcher at the Environmental Policy Group of Wageningen University and an associate fellow of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. Her research focuses on city networks for global environmental governance and the interactions between multinational private companies and cities in the search for sustainable urban futures.

Review :
"Bouteligier's insightful turn to emphasize globalizing urban networks get us past the usual crusty categorizations of some cities as global—and most as not. Her book does the hard empirical and critical work that enables a basic rethinking of the possibilities for innovative environmental governance. It is compelling." —Paul James, RMIT University Australia "Bouteligier's extensive and empirically rich study of networks of consultancy firms, non-governmental organizations and municipal governments sheds new light on how, why, and with what implications cities are playing a role in global environmental governance. It provides an important bridging point between the literatures on globalization, global cities, and environmental governance, and will be an important reference point for scholars engaged in these increasingly intertwined debates." — Harriet Bulkeley, Durham University