A Decade of Climate Action and the Mission towards Climate Neutrality and Adaptation in European Cities: Delivering Urban Transformations?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have to admit that the authors did review a large amount of literature, however, when I read the entire text carefully, I found that the manuscript spent a great deal of time listing the ideas of previous authors in the references, rather than summarizing and looking ahead to the ideas of the references. As a review manuscript, the elaboration of previous research work is indeed very important, but what is more important is the need for a systematic summary of previous research work and, based on that, an outlook for future research.

It is puzzling that the authors clearly raise the questions that the manuscript addresses in the last paragraph of the introduction, but for some reason do not answer each of them in the Results and Discussion sections of the manuscript. For example, in L73-L76, authors should summarize, rather than simply list, the specific work done by previous scholars and the governance methods and measures used in the results and discussion sections of the manuscript. The summary should be followed by an evaluation. Unfortunately, the authors did not do so.In L77-L78, I was very interested in the key factors of governance success mentioned by the authors, but unfortunately, the authors did not summarize them.

From the title of the manuscript and the introduction, it is clear that the actions taken by European cities in response to climate change will be the focus of the manuscript's synthesis. However, it is puzzling that the authors list in the Results and Discussion section a very large number of previous efforts, but do not see their relevance to the response to climate change.

The concluding section also fails to answer clearly the scientific question posed by the authors in the introduction. The narrative, after all that, just does not answer the question posed by the title of the manuscript: have the actions of European cities in the response to climate change transformed them? I think, as readers, we would have preferred a precise answer in the conclusion: "Transformation has been achieved" or "Transformation has not yet been achieved".

Author Response

Thank you so much for your feedback: we have found your comments very relevant and useful to improve the manuscript.

To improve the structure of the text, we have now renamed sections 3 and 4 in order to follow the methodology steps we describe in L114-117 to respond to the review question (L110). As a result, we focused on describing the  main conceptual approaches found in the litterature in section 3, and we summarized success factors and barriers from case studies in section 4 to make them more explicit.

In addition, thanks to your helpful feedback, we reworked the Conclusion section to include an outlook for future research: we renamed it as "conclusion and further research opportunities". In this section we evaluate future research directions based on the review and we emphasize the following points you raised: 1) What can learn from “key factors of governance success” from the case studies (and barriers) 2) What "relevance to the response to climate change” is brought by these ¨ previous efforts"?

When revising the conclusion we agree that the opening statement should be clearer and we state that “Transformation has not yet been achieved”, and that in most urban transformation is proceeding much more slowly than necessary. 

Many thanks again for your valuable feedback.

Reviewer 2 Report

In my view, the data used is extremely thin. Although the authors explain very clearly how the publications used were compiled, it only contains a handful of publications and these in turn only focus on a handful of countries in Europe. At this point, it would be worth considering whether it would not make sense to open up the circle of publications and also draw on other continents. Europe is certainly already well positioned in this process and utilises the advantage of the common Europe-wide legal situation, which is broken down into the respective national legislation. However, it is of greater interest to see how other countries outside Europe deal with this issue. Looking at the topic and the question beyond the borders of Europe would broaden the data basis used and certainly also the horizon of observation. It would allow a comparison of different approaches to the topic. For example, how does the USA deal with it, how does China? Are there parallels? Are there ideas that are implemented much better in other countries than in Europe or European countries, for example? Are there opportunities to learn from each other, perhaps even to adapt some things? There are a great many unanswered questions on this topic, which are not adequately answered in the short space of a few European examples. I would therefore advise the authors at this point to broaden the focus of this really interesting approach and to extend the work in this direction.

Author Response

Thank you so much for your feedback. We very much agree that the research would be enriched if we would incorporate perspectives from the Global South. . To follow your suggestion, we have now specified in the Methodology section the geographical limitations of this review.

 In this first research stage of our research plan, we have deliberately wished to contextualize the work in Europe, and we limited the research to the Global North. These limitations are present in our review question: “What are the challenges and key success factors amongst the governance approaches that have informed the implementation of transformative climate agendas in cities of the Global North?” because the practical goal of the research would be to inform European policymakers working in the Mission for Climate Neutral Cities: what have we learned in the past decade in Europe from climate experiments in cities which should be incorporated in this project? (L72 introduction)

Moreover, from a purely research perspective, we think that it is interesting to focus at this stage on “leading” players. Indeed, European cities have tried to implement climate mitigation and adaptation strategies for a number of years now and it is intriguing to observe that actual results are still modest even in this privileged part of the world. So, our intention is then at this point to the research: what can we learn from these frontrunners? However we very much agree that including responses from the Global South (China and Latin America for example) would be interesting in the context of our research. Including other regions is then under consideration when expanding the research and we take note of the relevance to expand scope of cases of transformations in “conclusion and further research opportunities” .

We hope to be able to incorprate and clarify any further questions in the revision. Many thanks for your valuable feedback.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is a literature review on climate actions. The method used is not new and it is an accepted method of analysis for comparing publications on a given topic.

The topic itself is particularly relevant for urban adaptation to climate change. In recent years, a large amount of research and articles have been written on the topic of climate action in cities. These include an analysis of the plans that are in place in the Global North. However, the conclusion in most cases is that urban transformation is proceeding much more slowly than necessary. Since the results achieved are often below the objectives, this raises new research questions: how can the effectiveness of action plans be improved? What steps need to be taken to increase the sense of ownership of the efforts that need to be made not only by the city governance but also by the citizens? These questions should be addressed in the discussion and conclusion sections of the article.

It is suggested that further research directions should include an examination of what should be done differently in practice in order to achieve urban transformation. In other words, beyond existing plans and strategies, how can civil organisations, NGOs and the general public be better mobilised?

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your constructive and thorough revision of the manuscript. The transformation is in fact much slower than required to achieve objectives, and we have restated your observation in the “ conclusion and further research” section we added. There we reflect on an outlook for future research, and we find the questions you suggest particularly relevant, and we included: 1) How can civil organizations, NGOs and the general public be better mobilized? 3) What steps need to be taken to increase the sense of ownership that are made not only by city governance but also by citizens. In “conclusion and further research opportunities” section, we describe the interorganizational steps that need to happen to break government silos, and bring citizen engagement and government action closer together. These interim transformations are happening along with a change in paradigm (which is a slower process). Additionally we argue that concrete and situated material transformations will more likely mobilize people's values and attachment to place, an interesting lens to further understand how the general public can become mobilized, beyond action plans.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Everything is ok, Congratulations to the authors.

Author Response

Many thanks, your comments have been extremely helpful to make improvements in the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Although many of the suggestions and comments have already been taken on board, I would again suggest that the explanation of the choice of the Global North be made a little clearer. Something like the authors did in the cover letter to the reviewer. This was very coherent and self-explanatory.

Author Response

Many thanks for your valuable feedback.  We have added in the Methodology Section a more detailed explanation on the geographical limitations of the scope of this research based on the arguments stated in the cover letter, as you recommended. We have also edited the last paragraph in "conclusion and future research opportunities" to restate the relevance of broadening the scope, by including the Global South in further research. Edits are highlighted in yellow in the updated version of the manuscript. Thank you for your comments, and please let us know if there are more suggestions.