Datensatz

Zusammenfassung

Urban studies have shown that the affordances, constraints and forms of urban climate change mitigation often emerge from ‘entrepreneurial’ modes of governance that have developed in post-Fordist cities. However, comparative research stresses that concepts focused on the growing power of private capital under neoliberalisation are inadequate to comprehend developments in German cities. In this article, we argue that municipally owned corporations occupy critical positions in climate change mitigation governance. While municipal ownership of utilities in principle increases local governance capacities, municipally owned corporations’ roles are shaped by fiscal relations and asymmetric organisational capacities between ‘agents’ and ‘principals’. In the case of Cologne, we show that the city has failed to leverage ownership over its public energy utility to decarbonise energy provision. Managers were able to assert corporate interests in the face of fragmented political actors and entrenched fiscal crisis. In this context of political incapacity and fragmentation, environmental social movements become important actors for translating widely shared decarbonisation objectives into concrete political demands towards municipally owned corporations.

城市研究表明，城市气候变化减缓的直观功能、制约因素和形式往往产生于后福特主义城市发展起来的 “创业 “治理模式。然而，比较研究强调，新自由主义影响下的以私人资本力量增长为重点的概念不足以理解德国城市的发展。本文认为市属公司在气候变化减缓治理中占据着重要地位。虽然公用事业的市政所有权原则上提高了地方治理能力，但市属公司的作用是由财政关系以及 “代理人 “和 “委托人 “之间不对称的组织能力决定的。在科隆市的案例中，我们发现该市未能利用其公共能源公用事业的所有权来实现能源供应的低碳化。面对四分五裂的政治行为体和根深蒂固的财政危机，企业管理者维护了企业利益。在这种政治无能和支离破碎的背景下，环保社会运动成为将广泛认同的去碳化目标转化为对市属公司的具体政治要求的重要行动者。