Governing spatial scaling within, beyond, and across cities

Expectations that cities can manage the growing challenges of climate change have increased. However, it has become evident that a lack of national and regional support cannot be compensated by local initiatives, in particular in smaller cities and towns. Therefore, we argue that the decarbonization of cities requires deliberate and institutionalized scaling within, beyond, and across cities. Scaling within cities means that place-based experiments need to be rolled out from one neighborhood to other neighborhoods within the same city. Scaling beyond cities implies the emergence of scaling between local governments and the surrounding region (e.g., in the areas of energy, transport, and food). Finally, scaling across cities refers to horizontal interactions between cities, which is facilitated by networks such as the Climate Alliance. All three types of scaling require material and/ or immaterial networks. This paper combines these three forms of spatial scaling with three modes of local climate governance in multilevel systems, ranging from hard to soft instruments: (1) regulatory instruments (e.g., standards, mandates, regulation of service providers, binding forms of planning) that require state coercion (governing by authority) and can be supported by sanctions if necessary; (2) economic instruments, including positive incentives (e.g., funding, subsidies, grants) as well as negative incentives (taxes, fees, and charges); (3) voluntary instruments (e.g., enabling, capacity building, and awareness-raising; certification and awards; networking and voluntary agreements) that do not require state coercion. By focusing on the spatial dimensions of scaling (i.e. scaling within, beyond, and across cities), we develop a new conceptual approach to analyze the chances and challenges of scaling local climate policies in multilevel systems. Starting from this conceptual framework, we ask how scaling is governed within, beyond, and across European forerunner cities. Subsequently, we focus on a timely case-study, the heat transition in Germany. In general terms, we find that German forerunner cities lag behind cities in Northern Europe. Overall, the study shows that the mix of policy instruments is changing. We see not only a hardening of soft instruments (such as mandatory heat plans) but also a need to supplement scaling within and across cities by scaling beyond cities, i.e. scaling policies focusing on local climate action beyond city borders.