From framing to implementation: The experience of local sustainability administration in the US

Abstract

Research on municipal sustainability and climate policy has grown substantially in recent years and has been shaped by the choices and efforts of local policymakers and administrators. Recent research has looked at the framing and language used by policymakers and city administrators as they draft and implement climate change policy. This project provides additional information about the evolution of climate change language in municipal government to understand how municipal actors conceptualize the work they do and the language they use. This project analyzes content from city plans along with elite interviews of municipal staff to capture the ways that communities tap into environmental policymaking and how their understanding of these ideas has changed over time. Relying on data from Western United States and Southern United States cities, this research examines the usage of the dialogues surrounding sustainability, climate mitigation and adaptation, and resilience by municipal governments. It demonstrates that there have been changes in how municipal governments think about different climate change concepts, as well as further insights about sustainability framing links to implementation efforts by municipalities.