‘Rhetoric and Practices of Green Recovery in Cities’ is a research community funded by the GW4 Alliance. We bring together researchers from different disciplines and universities to investigate the emergent rhetoric and practices of ‘green recovery’ from COVID-19 in UK cities. We aim to facilitate collaborations, expand our research network, and produce high-quality grant proposals.

Project Overview

Rhetorics of ‘green recovery’ have emerged with the desire to ‘build back better’ from the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the precise policies and practices associated with this rhetoric remain undefined. How are different actors mobilising these rhetorics, and to what extent do they provide an opportunity to rethink ways of organising urban life?

This interdisciplinary project investigates the way that ‘future scenarios’ are used to construct and contest knowledge about climate change and transitions to net zero. It focusses on four cities in the South West—Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, and Exeter.

Our key research themes are:

  • Pledges and policies to achieve net zero, and how the politics of knowledge production interacts with policy at the city-scale;
  • Interactions between activist groups and formal governance structures;
  • The role of rhetoric and narrative in perceptions of climate change and environmental policy;
  • How different actors are mobilising rhetorics of green recovery.

To address these themes, this community is collaborating with existing climate and environmental research groups in the South West; establishing connections with organisations in the private, public, and voluntary sectors as pathways to achieving impact; and developing and showcasing the work of early career researchers alongside that of more established academics. We are embarking on an ambitious programme of grant-capture to support our activities in the longer-term, and expand our operations to a wider European scale.

At a time when climate breakdown requires urgent and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, this project will help to imagine and implement more just transitions to a low-carbon future.