sectors or departments (Candel and Biesbroek 2016). This could include explicit collaboration across existing government programmes, interdepartmental working groups (for example, Cape Town’s resilience team) and legislative orders, among others. Beyond coordination, long-term institutional capacity is also key to pave the way for transformative change, even through changing political priorities.


v Foster inter-city exchanges and co-learning: While it is important that urban agendas consider their own context, geography and history, there is enormous value in sharing experiences with other cities. Networked learning can enable cities to think more critically about future challenges that are not a current priority, or encourage others to identify historical processes and barriers that are impeding their efforts to achieve a more environmentally sustainable and equitable future. In recent years, city networks and national and international associations of local governments have played an important catalytic and intermediary role in creating opportunities for idea-sharing among cities, building partnerships with other spheres of government, advocating for policy change, providing neutral platforms for local stakeholders to engage and building local government capacity. A wide variety of national and international local government networks have been established to support cities in transforming their urban systems and metabolisms.


v Pursue coordinated collaborations for transformative impact: Multilevel governance structures that coordinate a wide range of actors are powerful mechanisms for transformation if used effectively to mitigate the risks associated with pilot projects and to enable upscaling. Mechanisms such as grants and subsidies, incentives to trigger performance improvements, favourable legislation and effective decentralization at the levels of local government can create the conditions for multiple complimentary actions that are aligned towards achieving transformative goals. It is well- known that local governments in developing countries are often unable to address all their needs with their own resources. As such, there is a need for national (and sometimes international) support, particularly to address global issues such as decarbonization. Beyond government institutions, the private sector and civil society are important partners for development. Innovative financing options for urban infrastructure are also important methods for overcoming limited public sector capacity and for attracting funding to cities (UNFCCC 2019). Moreover, collaborations with civil society can help fill communication and implementation gaps, and can support collective visions and governance frameworks that are crucial for effective transformation. Finally, strengthened opportunities for citizen co- production can open up new avenues for improving governance capacity.


v Design urban infrastructure for more environmentally sustainable production and consumption: Due to its long-lasting nature, urban infrastructure can become “locked in” and shape resource needs for decades to come. It can therefore also play a key role in shifting


120 GEO for Cities


environmentally unsustainable production and consumption patterns in cities by providing alternative systems (for example, public transport instead of highways). However, decisions about infrastructure investments and the protection of environmental resources and ecosystems may sometimes clash and often exclude issues of equity or social justice. Cities need to balance the protection of vital ecosystem services and ensure the rights of people living in poverty and those living on rural-urban borders to prevent infrastructure from promoting unsustainable patterns of urban growth and expansion.


v Build reciprocal rural-urban linkages: A range of flows and interactions between urban and rural areas can serve as entry points for the development of interventions with reciprocal benefits. These include the two-way movement of people, capital, information, nutrients and ecosystem services, among others. Ecosystem services between urban and rural areas can be strengthened by maintaining or rebuilding ecological infrastructure as a strategy for improving water and food security, sustaining livelihoods, reducing poverty and building resilience to disasters and climate change impacts. It is therefore important to adopt planning approaches that consider this rural-urban divide and engage with the governance systems that can ultimately determine how, where and what type of projects work and for whom.


v Use foresight and planning to prevent negative impacts and unintended consequences: Many of the experiences reviewed throughout this chapter more often than not show that efforts to enable transformative change in one area could trigger negative impacts and unintended consequences in another. This can be seen in the experiences of many cities embarking on environmental sustainability initiatives, which in turn have led to eco-gentrification and displacement. Such consequences must not be addressed as an afterthought. Rather, planning must incorporate the adoption of proactive and preventive mechanisms, for example, through the adoption of land-value capture instruments and the protection of social housing and mixed-use buildings.


v Gather knowledge from real-world actions to encourage learning and replication: This requires refining the way that transformative change is thought about and how it contributes to or undermines substantial change. Thought should be given to the following four key considerations: a) Assess the reach of concrete actions, plans and programmes: Do they have city-wide impacts? Do their impacts extend beyond the city?


b) Scrutinize their impact sensitivity: Do these actions and interventions respond to the diverse sociocultural needs, experiences and aspirations of women, men, girls and boys? Do they protect and enhance biodiversity and nature’s rights within and beyond cities?


c) Consider their empowering capacity to help build equal political participation in the governance of transformative change: Do they open political


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