ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 of Planning Wild Cities is entitled ‘Planning in climate change’. The need for speed grips the contemporary imagination. Urgent action is needed to address the climate emergency. The Coronavirus global pandemic demands a fast response for public health restrictions and responsibilities to flatten the pandemic curve and save lives. Acceleration of the economy rather than deceleration is the driving leitmotif of twenty-first-century Western modernity. On the other hand, the frustratingly slow transition to low-carbon cities and reduced emissions in the face of climate change creates its own tensions. Planning embodies this paralysis and reflects these critical contradictions and tensions. Caught between regulatory bureaucracy and market-led development pressures, the task for planning this chapter argues requires nothing less than a complete reinvention of ambition. The chapter will be of particular interest to students and scholars of planning, urban studies, and sustainable development, and for all those invested in re-shaping our ‘wild’ city futures.
