Urban decarbonization policy as assembling process: heterogeneous elements, networks and (un)making of target groups in a Swedish municipality between serendipity and design

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, I approach urban decarbonization policy as an assembling process. Based on interview material in the municipality of Umeå, Sweden, the article highlights three important aspects of how planners, strategists and project managers produce decarbonization policies, initiatives or experimental projects. The first shows how an important part of the policymaking is to contend with and bring together heterogeneous elements (e.g. low-carbon mobility initiatives, private companies, municipal transport system) to work for one goal (e.g. some families experimenting with car-free life). The second shows how cultivating relations within and outside the municipality offices allows project managers to form trusted networks that are instrumental towards more efficient policymaking and implementation. The last shows how planners unmake and remake target groups to produce coherent and effective policies. While each of these aspects, respectively, highlight typical tropes of assemblage thinking (i.e. heterogeneity, relationality and coherence) together they share a concern with the labour and work required by policy as an assembling process. Making policy on cross-sectional issues such as decarbonization, reveals labour as a relevant category to attend to the necessary tension between mission-oriented design and an openness and ability to capitalize on more serendipitous moments and opportunities.