Mainstreaming climate change in urban development: Lessons from Cape Town

Cape Town’s drought crisis grabbed global headlines in 2018 and its causes and solutions were – and continue to be – hotly debated. But managing water shortages and other climate change impacts have been integrated into the city’s urban policy-making for some time, in response to rapid urbanisation and uncertainty about the exact nature, timing and magnitude of city-scale climatic changes.

This book presents initiatives at the local government level, across a range of departments, from environmental resource management to housing, stormwater management, water management, energy management and spatial planning. In addition, it records the progress made and challenges faced in mainstreaming climate change into urban policies, processes, programmes and practices, a problem facing most urban areas around the world.

The text was co-produced by academics and municipal officials, including economists, engineers, ecologists, geographers and planners, who worked collaboratively in a process of mutual learning. This hybrid process, where practitioner experience is coupled with an academic and research perspective, has produced an ‘insider’ view of urban development and climate change governance through the lens of theory. The result provides new practice-based knowledge for policy-making in the transition towards more sustainable cities in the face of climate change, particularly those in the global South.