- Toward low carbon cities: Madrid and London    215 kb by    Ryser, Judith & Franchini, Teresa | jryser@dircon.co.uk    Short Outline The paper focuses on policies of mitigation and adaptation to climate change of two capitals. A critical comparison of recent initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions at city level identifies positive results as well as areas of further exploration. Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine, compare and contrast what cities are doing to reduce their CO2 emissions. Focussing on the authors’ home cities Madrid and London it compares policies, implementation strategies, together with constraints which may hamper public policies in this area. By subscribing to the Kyoto objectives, both Spain and the UK have declared a national commitment to curb the human contribution toward adverse climate change. They have set country targets, put into place national programmes of green house gas emission reductions and alternative energy generation and produced policy guidelines for local authorities. Moreover, they are encouraging the greatest contributors to CO2 emissions - industry, transport, commerce, housing, energy generation and the public sector generally - to take appropriate measures, including raising awareness among the general public of the need to act at individual level. The paper will highlight the most important policies of mitigation and adaptation to climate change which Madrid and London have adopted, and are proposing in the light of their experiences with implementation. The focus is on energy and water consumption, waste management, construction and building design, together with measures aimed to achieve results through planning and development control. Efforts of the two cities and their countries to improve scientific knowledge, innovative technologies and empirical data on the human effects on climate change are also taken into account. A critical comparison of the adopted policies at city level aims to identify policies which have already brought some positive results, together with problems encountered and reasons why certain planning policies may not be appropriate tools. Some positive examples of low carbon design efforts are selected to illustrate which protagonists are best placed to implement actions aimed to reduce carbon emissions in cities. The paper will conclude with lessons of use to other cities. Keywords climate change mitigation adaptation CO2 reduction energy efficiency Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2009: Low Carbon Cities   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper