Experimental governance for low-carbon buildings and cities: Value and limits of local action networks

City governments have become increasingly active in governing the transition to low-carbon buildings and cities. They are often more ambitious than the governments of the nation states they are embedded in. They are, however, limited by their national legal and policy frameworks in realising these ambitions. In response, city governments have begun to experiment with local action networks that bring together policymakers, city bureaucrats, firms, citizens, and civil society groups. To better understand their value and limits, this article studies four such action networks from Australia and the United States. It finds that the scalability of lessons learnt from these action networks is hampered by too strong a focus on leadership by the network administrators.