Realigning the electricity city: legacies of energy autarky in Berlin and Hong Kong

Abstract

Whilst cities are widely regarded as playing a pivotal role in low carbon transitions, recent research is high-lighting the enormous variety in urban responses to climate change. The search for model development tra-jectories for the low carbon city is being clouded by stories of deviation, contestation, appropriation and ad-aptation peculiar to specific urban contexts. This differentiated picture of urban low carbon transitions as they are really happening is helpfully opening up the debate to the multifarious factors shaping urban re-sponses to climate change and the emergent challenges for both policy and research. What is in danger of getting lost in these powerfully ‘presentist' narratives is a sense of where these urban responses are coming from and how historical legacies of energy production and use are influencing (low carbon) options for the …