Disrupt and unlock? The role of actors in urban adaptation path-breaking

Abstract

Despite the growing demands in what urban adaptation (policy) is expected to address (e.g. systemic injustices), incremental responses are the norm. The role of different actors is investigated for maintaining and breaking path-dependencies in Atlanta, Georgia, US: (1) the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience (MOSR), (2) the Atlanta Beltline Partnership (ABP), and (3) the Stop COP-City/Defend the Atlanta Forest Movement (SCCM). A mixed-method research approach consists of participant observation, document analysis, and interviews. The findings contribute to a better understanding of different forms of disruption and the role actors play in maintaining, reinforcing, and unlocking transformative adaptation pathways. The study shows how the MOSR serves to maintain status quo adaptation pathways. The ABP reinforces status quo interests by disrupting ‘from the middle.’ The SCCM disrupts urban (adaptation) governance ‘from below’ with potential for unlocking new pathways through exposing ‘the Atlanta Way,’ developing new organizational structures and imaginaries that reconcile different struggles of oppression. Whereas actors who disrupt from ‘the middle’ are perceived as a legitimate part of politics, actors who disrupt ‘from below’ are impeded by incumbent actors and their use of disproportionate repression strategies. Practice relevance The goals, organization, and strategies used by different actors in urban adaptation governance reveal how disruption may be identified and whether this leads to unlocking transformative adaptation pathways. All cases are representative of different urban adaptation governance practices, some of which (initially) actively challenged dominant status quo imaginaries of human–nature relationships and associated power relations. Three terrains of disruption are introduced: ‘disruption from above,’ ‘disruption from the middle,’ and ‘disruption from below.’ This differentiation challenges common assumptions of social movements as the only ‘disruptors’ by hinting at the embeddedness of political status in different variants of disruption. The use of force against ‘disruption from below’ unveils a problematic understanding and practices of politics that undermine democratic processes. There is a need to politically (re)engage a different understanding of politics that may as well be ‘disruptive from below’ in the sense of introducing something new and interrupting the established.