ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a research agenda around the mobilization of low carbon urbanism outside dominant understandings of development. It asks questions about the potential, limitations and implications of addressing climate change in cities in the global South through initiatives and social movements which operate via what could be called a post-development logic. The chapter draws on some advances: a recognition of a broad range of transition discourses as markers for post-development, a foregrounding of a language of hope and possibility, and a political project around a transformation in how the economy is represented. It uses a post-development approach to unpack the multiple and contradicted ways in which low carbon urbanism is being mobilized in the global South. Since the late 1990s a small non-profit in Sao Paulo has been working towards the technological development, promotion and implementation of low-cost designing and promoting low-cost do-it-yourself solar hot-water systems.
