Adapting (to) the 'climate crisis': Urban environmental governance and the politics of mobility in Seattle

In recent years cities emerged as primary loci of interest in the fight against global climate change. Geographers are keenly interested in understanding the complex and multi-scalar political-economic context that shapes local governmental actions to reduce or manage carbon emissions. Yet to date surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of activists in shaping local climate governance. In particular, scholars have yet to carefully examine how activists utilize the climate crisis to contest local governmental actions or advocate for alternative visions of urban life. Likewise there has been little research documenting how local governmental regimes adapt to accommodate, incorporate, or deflect such contestation. To explore these questions I conducted an ethnographic case study of a prolonged debate regarding how to replace an aging elevated highway that runs along Seattle's downtown waterfront. Activists mobilized the 'climate crisis' in their campaign to remove the highway and replace it with improved streets and public transit. In my analysis I employ the concept of 'articulation' to explain how an idea, such as the relationship between climate change and urban mobility, is transformed as it is incorporated into a regime of governance. I found that activists were successful in establishing the climate crisis as a central issue of concern in the viaduct debate. However transportation planners accommodated this new concern through an extension of existing governmental logics rather than through a fundamental reconsideration of Seattle's automobile-centric transportation system. Likewise the climate crisis was mobilised by local officials to justify dominant neoliberal urban economic development strategies rather than to call for new ones. Mechanisms of 'governmentality' facilitated these outcomes by engaging activists in the process of rearticulating their concerns to cohere with the established regime of governance. This significantly undermined the ability of activists to effectively contest the established regime or call for more fundamental shifts in urban planning and economic development priorities. My findings extend our understandings of the potential and limitations that the climate crisis presents to activists seeking to challenge regimes of governance that perpetuate automobility. I conclude by presenting evidence for the potential of an alternative urban politics of the climate crisis---one that both directly challenges automobility while explicitly tending to the issue of social justice.