Climate change and Czech cities

The book introduces Czech readers to a topic that links urban and municipal governance research with the question of how society responds to global climate change. Through the lens of interdisciplinary urban studies and urban sociology, it explores the responses to climate change emerging at city level both globally and in the Czech Republic. It provides a brief overview of international urban studies debates on cities and climate change, alongside the key findings of research conducted elsewhere over the past 20 years. At the same time, the book offers a new definition of "urban climate change responses". It then uses this concept to describe and explain the responses that emerged in Czech cities between 2017 and 2019, drawing on qualitative research conducted by a team from the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The book reports on the findings of a study across five Czech cities, based primarily on in-depth interviews and focus groups with experts, local government representatives, the non-profit sector, activists, and local residents. Readers will discover whether and how urban responses to climate change in the Czech Republic differed from those in cities elsewhere in the world during this period, how climate change was communicated in the Czech context at the time, what complications accompany efforts to respond to the issue, and whether explicitly naming climate change is always a prerequisite for people to react or adapt to local impacts such as drought. Finally, the book introduces the term "inconspicuous responses to climate change" and highlights the benefits of a qualitative approach to urban and climate change research. This approach accommodates a diverse range of actors and, alongside official responses, also tracks the "micro-practices" of households and individual city residents, offering a deeper understanding of what is actually happening in cities in response to climate change.