ABSTRACT
This chapter examines current academic understanding and policy developments around governance and planning processes that relate to and impact retrofitting by city governments. It focuses on the challenges facing cities in the coming decades in reducing the carbon footprint of domestic, commercial and public buildings. Central to this area of work are academic debates on the governing capacity of cities to address climate change adaptation and mitigation, both in terms of policy delivery and facilitating change. Two key issues here are the ways in which local governments interact with and can influence private sector and public sector landlords in delivering the low-/zero-carbon retrofit of buildings, and the influence they have with local communities and residents, particularly through engaging people in changing behaviour to reduce energy consumption. This chapter assesses the key policy drivers for urban retrofits in providing a foundation for cities to take integrated action for retrofitting on a large scale. It then explores the role and impact of financial incentives that have been introduced or are in the pipeline, such as feed-in tariffs and the Green Deal, and assesses the opportunities that these may present for city governments, both in terms of working with private sector and social housing providers and through supporting individual households in undertaking retrofitting of their properties.
