Cities and global ecological change: The governance of climate change and biodiversity in Canadian urban regions

What kind of ‘systems’ are cities? For many sociologists, though they don’t often use the term, they are basically socio-technical systems; the most complex systems human beings have created. Cities are the joint product of planned and unplanned action. Urban sociology has tended to stress the social and political production of space and infrastructures, and has eschewed the ecological dimensions of urban and metropolitan areas as determining factors. Sociologists remain sceptical of a too strong ecological approach to the urban way of life. However, is traditional urban sociology not challenged by the global ecological problems and the part cities can play in ecological global governance? The paper will examine sociological approaches to cities with regard to the environment and environmental problems. It will look at the idea of socio-ecological system and it implications for urban governance. Critical of an approach that may tend to ‘naturalize’ societies, but, on the other hand, conscious that urban areas cannot abstract themselves from their ‘ecologies’, the paper will present research results on the governance, joint or not, of climate change and biodiversity in Canadian metropolitan areas. What factors help governing, jointly or not, two global ecological problems at the urban level? What factors hinder such an action? Cities greatly differ among themselves and this can be shown in the Canadian context. But they also share common policies especially with respect to urban planning. Are the new planning ideas, such as densification, public transport improvements, urban sustainability in the likes of smart growth and new urbanism, leading to a better grasp of global issues and to a substantial contribution of cities to global governance? The paper will conclude with some considerations on linking a socio-ecological system approach to a sociotechnical approach.