Exploring the potential of city networks for climate: the case of urbact

Over the last decades, a growing strand of research has focused on the role that citynetworks play in local policy innovation and learning in thefield of climate and theenvironment. In this regard, global transnational city networks have been at the coreof the academic debate, whereas the number of studies investigating the Europeancontext and, more specifically, the networking initiatives supported or‘orchestrated’by the European Union (EU) has, to date, been limited. This article improves ourunderstanding of how the latter type of network operates, and the extent to whichthese networks comply with expectations regarding their learning and capacity-building potential. By adopting social network analysis as a framework, weformulate and test a number of research propositions, and thus unpack therelevance and impact of the EU URBACT programme, which, since the year 2000,has promoted the creation of city networks as a tool for use in peer-to-peerlearning and capacity-building in thefield of sustainable urban development.