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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Public Administration

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Public Administration Faculty Scholarship

Climate change

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Unlikely Pioneers: Creative Climate Policymaking In Smaller U.S. Cities, George C. Homsy Mar 2018

Unlikely Pioneers: Creative Climate Policymaking In Smaller U.S. Cities, George C. Homsy

Public Administration Faculty Scholarship

With the U.S. federal government stepping away from climate change, a number of cities have indicated that they will continue efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Broad statistical analysis and case studies of larger and often progressive cities have provided some insight into what drives local governments to act on climate change mitigation. However, the vast majority of U.S. municipalities, most of them small, do nothing. Understanding what might drive smaller, poorer, and less progressive places is important if local governments are expected to take the lead on this global commons issue. In this exploratory study, I examine a group …


Size, Sustainability, And Urban Climate Planning In A Multilevel Governance Framework, George C. Homsy Sep 2017

Size, Sustainability, And Urban Climate Planning In A Multilevel Governance Framework, George C. Homsy

Public Administration Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, the absence of federal leadership on climate change and a strong tradition of localism has created a system in which many greenhouse gas reduction efforts fall to the discretion of municipalities. This often leads to uncoordinated action across jurisdictional boundaries. Despite the widespread notion that cities can lead on climate policy from the bottom up, I find, using a logistic regression analysis of data from 1,837 municipalities, that local governments are more likely to enact climate change policies in an environment where higher levels of government have acted rather than in a decentralized one. Smaller municipalities, …