ABSTRACT
With this article, we showed for both interrelated policy sectors that not only do urban climate policies vary but also the shared beliefs and sense-making processes differ from city to city. Furthermore, we showed that the adopted measures in our cases are clearly based on knowledge. In contrast to the empirical results of Article 1 in this special issue, this article also indicates a coherent and thus city-specific knowledge order in climate policy. While the focus in Article 1 of this special issue is on the ‘constitutional choice level’ as well as on the ‘collective choice level’, our research has concentrated on the ‘operational choice level’ – to use the distinction made by Ostrom et al. between different levels of action within their IAD framework (1994, 46). Nevertheless, both articles argue that knowledge orders are consistent across the different choice levels. In short, although a knowledge order is characterized by various elements, such as structure, processes and content, there is a particular locally embedded dominant knowledge order in all analysed cities.
