European Policies for Urban Climate Justice

This book brings together urbanisation, climate justice, and equity within a single interpretive framework, showing how the climate crisis and urban policy co-produce impacts and effects in urban contexts.

Drawing on planetary urbanisation theory and the frameworks of climate justice and just transition, European Policies for Urban Climate Justice interrogates the political, institutional, and socio-spatial dimensions of municipal climate strategies in Europe. The book offers a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis, spanning a critique of EU climate governance architecture to fieldwork-based case studies of Amsterdam, Bilbao, Freiburg, and Lisbon. It advances a conceptual triptych of climate justice, just transition, and equity: climate justice as a moral-political framing of unequal climate burdens and responses; just transition as a governance and policy project linking decarbonisation with social justice; and equity as the imperative to approach the climate crisis with the explicit aim of converging towards a more equitable society. Building on this, the book develops ecological conversion as a way of characterising the depth and direction of transition itself.

This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in urban studies, political sociology, political ecology, human geography, and environmental policy. It will also appeal to planners, policymakers, and civil-society practitioners working on urban climate strategies across European institutions and municipalities.