Exploring the Forms of City-to-City Exchange

by Yoann Clouet & Marco Kj?r

With national governments failing to implement, or even disengaging from, the commitments of the Paris agreement in the late 2010s, cities became increasingly visible in international discussions on climate, and the multi-level governance of efforts against climate change. This municipal push proved again that subnational organisations are key actors in the fights against climate change. Arenas for exchange between cities have “emerged to enable cities in building capacities and formulating climate policy” (Zapata et al, 2024). Analysing these processes of exchange of knowledge between cities is an emerging field of research: understanding and evaluating how cities can learn from each other’s experiences and adopt successful strategies in different contexts is essential to promote the effectiveness and scalability of urban climate initiatives. With this paper we propose a systematic lens of analysis to describe these processes.

ABOUT KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE BETWEEN CITIES AND THE STATE OF RESEARCH ON THE TOPIC

The process of exchange of knowledge between cities is a useful tool to support the large dissemination of implementation strategies and best practices for sustainable urban development among cities (Castanho, 2019). In general, it is understood as following the concept of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, where a peer within a group learns something new and then spreads it within that group (Dieperink et al, 2023). It is a great resource to address the shared challenges of climate change and its impacts in urban environments. By exchanging knowledge, best practices, and innovative solutions, cities learn from one another to accelerate their efforts in becoming more resilient and sustainable. Such exchange allows cities to learn from each other’s successes and failures, fostering the adoption of effective policies and they can thus collectively enhance their capacity to combat climate change, improving outcomes for millions of people worldwide.

The exchange of knowledge between cities can happen in many ways, from one-on-one between two cities to entire networks of cities (Leal & Paterson, 2024): it can take different forms, notably with different learning means, objectives and outcomes and numerous variables in terms of scope, thematic, etc.

Existing academic research on the topic fails to take into account all the different forms of exchange: according to a systematic literature review performed by E.M. Ense?ado (Ense?ado, 2024), research on the process of knowledge exchange between cities either: doesn’t mention the learning means, (eg. what we would describe as the arena of learning) (50 % of articles reviewed), or focuses on transnational networks and partnerships and cooperation programmes (22% and 15% respectively) (Ense?ado, 2024 – Table 9, Appendix 3). The fact that 50% of the reviewed literature does not distinguish between the different learning means is quite revelatory, in our opinion, of the lack of a systematic analytical approach to study these processes.

To set up successful knowledge exchange between cities it is useful to understand what has worked best so far, and why. Systematically identifying the different “forms” of knowledge exchange between cities will help to assess which one is optimal with regards to expected objectives and context. For the purpose of this research, we will be using the term ‘form’ as the concept to encompass the different ways in which the knowledge exchange of cities can happen, or in other words, the different dimensions such a process can adopt. For instance, we understand “learning means”, “scope” and “topics”, inter alia, as some of these different dimensions of knowledge exchange between cities.

KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE BETWEEN CITIES: “CITY-TO-CITY LEARNING”, “CITY-TO-CITY KNOWLEDGE SHARING” OR “CITY-TO-CITY EXCHANGE”?

“Learning” describes a specific process and outcome of exchange, which, as summed up by E.M. Ense?ado (2024), “leads to improved understanding of an issue as well as to alteration or updating of behavior, strategies, thoughts, and beliefs in light of other actor’s experience or as a response to new information” (Ense?ado, 2024). In this perspective, “City-to-City Learning” primarily focuses on bringing changes amongst the participants (which we will refer to as “internal changes”).

Bakket et al. (2024) use the broader concept of “City-to-City Knowledge Sharing” which better describes the different types of learning: based on the degree of involvement they identify three “overarching categories of knowledge sharing” (Bakker et al, 2024):

• knowledge transfer
• knowledge exchange
• knowledge co-creation

However, they still understand it as processes whereby the outcomes are mainly applicable within the participants of the process.

In our opinion, the two concepts exclude peer-to-peer processes whereby the knowledge shared brings about direct or indirect changes, or outcomes, that are external to the participants (for instance changes brought about in the national policy framework thanks to recommendations formulated by the participants of such an exchange that is focused on policy cooperation and common advocacy) (Ense?ado, 2024).

For the purpose of this research we therefore propose to use the term of ‘City to City Exchange’ as encompassing any forms of peer-to-peer dialogues between cities, regardless of its output and finality. In our view, the concept of City-to-City Exchange thus better captures all the different forms of exchange between cities, and their varying dimensions.

A NEW ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND CITY-TO-CITY EXCHANGE

In our opinion, existing research on the topic either:

? lacks a comprehensive perspective on city-to-city exchange, and fails to cover all different its forms, or ? covers most forms city-to-city exchange without providing a clear set of parameters to categorise them and delineate experiences that are common / exclusive to specific forms of city-to-city exchange

As indicated in the previous section, research on City-to-City Exchange often only focuses on established forms of cooperation (notably transnational networks of cities). In their research, Arango et. al appropriately propose to expand the scope of research to distinguish between transnational, national and regional processes (Zapata et al, 2024). However, focusing research to City-to-City Exchange happening with a certain degree of institutionalisation (e.g. through formalised networks) only, is limiting. It fails to capture experiences happening within what we would define as “project-based” City-to-City Exchange, especially when the scope of the project is not explicitly City-to-City exchange. We would argue, for instance, that any projects that involves several cities can be considered as City-to-City Exchange, even if it is not formalised as such, since city participants participate and discuss together the implementation of related activities, thereby learning from one another.

The “heterogeneity” of these processes is well-described in Cortes et al. (2022), but there again, their object of analysis is limited to what they describe as “climate city networks”, eg. “formalised subnational governance that have climate change as their focus” (Cortes et al, 2022) which omits City-to-City Exchange processes that are less formalised as such (project-based processes, for instance) or do not present themselves as climate change focused.

Our proposed framework compiles a number of dimensions to systematically describe the different forms of City-to-City exchanges, to reflect their heterogeneity on holistic perspective.

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