Exploring the potential of city networks for climate: the case of urbact

Over the last decades, a growing strand of research has focused on the role that city networks play in local policy innovation and learning in the field of climate and the environment. In this regard, global transnational city networks have been at the core of the academic debate, whereas the number of studies investigating the European context and, more specifically, the networking initiatives supported or ‘orchestrated’ by the European Union (EU) has, to date, been limited. This article improves our understanding of how the latter type of network operates, and the extent to which these networks comply with expectations regarding their learning and capacity-building potential. By adopting social network analysis as a framework, we formulate and test a number of research propositions, and thus unpack the relevance and impact of the EU URBACT programme, which, since the year 2000, has promoted the creation of city networks as a tool for use in peer-to-peer learning and capacity-building in the field of sustainable urban development.