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Enabling environments for regime destabilization towards sustainable urban transitions in megacities: comparing Shanghai and Istanbul

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Abstract

Sustainable urban transitions promise high mitigation and adaptation potential to address the effects of anthropogenic climate change. The two coastal megacities studied in this paper, Shanghai and Istanbul, have the potential for low-carbon urban transitions that can destabilize existing regimes. The destabilization is brought about by the disruptive business model innovations of the sharing economy in Shanghai’s mobility sector and by the energy-efficient practices developed alongside the intensification of the building sector through the process of urban renewal in Istanbul. However, the emergence of such urban transitions through the actions of agents relies on the existence of enabling environments for regime destabilization. In a comparative case study of Shanghai and Istanbul, we assess the challenges of realizing regime destabilization opportunities through an enabling environment framework. We find that without adequate enabling environments for regime destabilization, urban transitions to sustainability may fail to achieve effective low-carbon action and make progress towards meeting the sustainable development goals. We also show that while deliberate and collective efforts are underway from multiple agents within and beyond the two megacities, the environments for regime destabilization in the building and transport sectors considered remain insufficient primarily due to conflicting priorities among key agents in the underlying urban systems.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all participants to the two workshops held in Istanbul and Shanghai and to the intervieewes. This paper benefited from the thoughtful comments of three anonymous reviewers.

Funding

This work was supported by the EU Horizon 2020 GREEN-WIN project (642018 RIA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Environmental Social Science Program, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

    Mahir Yazar

  2. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Dina Hestad, Yuge Ma & Thomas F Thornton

  3. NEOMA Business School, Mont-Saint-Aignan, France

    Diana Mangalagiu

  4. Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Ali Kerem Saysel

  5. Tongji University, Shanghai, China

    Dajian Zhu

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  1. Mahir Yazar
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  2. Dina Hestad
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Correspondence to Mahir Yazar.

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This article is part of a Special Issue on “Win-Win Solutions to Climatic Change” edited by Diana Mangalagiu, Alexander Bisaro, Jochen Hinkel, and Joan David Tàbara

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Yazar, M., Hestad, D., Mangalagiu, D. et al. Enabling environments for regime destabilization towards sustainable urban transitions in megacities: comparing Shanghai and Istanbul. Climatic Change 160, 727–752 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02726-1

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