Approximately half of the world’s population live in cities, and this share is increasing yearly and projected to reach 60% by 2030.
All cities are facing a range of challenges that will influence the nature of urban growth and development across Australia.
Climate change is central amongst these, and will have direct implications for urban processes through changes to temperature and precipitation patterns. The urban environment has distinctive biophysical and biogeographic features in relation to the surrounding rural areas. These include an altered energy exchange creating urban heat islands, and changes to hydrology such as decreased or increased surface runoff of rainwater.
The vitality of the cities depends on the above spatial relationships and the metabolism implying a greater loss of farmland, forests, and species diversity; plus more traffic and more pollution.
Urban policy makers should consider to what extent their nearest resources are close to exhaustion and, if necessary, appropriate strategies to slow exploitation.
It is apparent that the metabolism data have been established for some cities, and interpretation issues exist due to differences in the ideologue of governmental persuasions.
As such, some municipalities across the country are increasingly placing the issue on their agendas and are responding to the issue.
This workshop examines the history and development of urban climate governance, the policies and measures that have been put into place, the multilevel governance context in which these are undertaken, and the factors that have structured the possibilities for addressing the issue.
