Urban resilience in motion: The diffusion of urban resilience policies in transnational municipal networks

Abstract

Transnational municipal networks (TMNs) play a pivotal role in urban planning and policy by encouraging peer learning among member cities. Recent studies have called for examining influencing-learning patterns in these networks. This study identifies key hypotheses related to policy diffusion within TMNs from extant literature and empirically tests their validity by studying the diffusion of resilience policies in the 100 Resilient Cities Network (100RC), the leading urban resilience TMN. A referencing network of member cities (nodes) and directed resilience policy knowledge flows (edges) is developed using the resilience strategy documents of the member cities and is analyzed along five urban resilience dimensions: health and well-being, economy and society, infrastructure and environment, leadership and strategy, and equity. Various network configurations and node centrality measures are explored, along with exponential random graph modeling and negative binomial regression analysis. The findings indicate the presence of highly influential cities (influencers) belonging to high-income countries. Influential cities are climate champions, joined 100RC early, have membership in multiple TMNs, and are from geographies with low physical resilience. Strong learners are predominantly from upper-middle-income and lower-middle-income countries. New York, Melbourne, New Orleans, Rotterdam, Mexico City, and Medellín are superstars in 100RC. We find a “Global North bias” in 100RC, despite its efforts to encourage peer learning between diverse cities. The study highlights the need for practitioners to carefully consider the design of TMNs committed to nurturing peer learning between cities, ensuring that geopolitical disparities and network organization do not inhibit meaningful sharing of knowledge.