Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/251862 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Sustainability [ISSN:] 2071-1050 [Volume:] 13 [Issue:] 16 [Article No.:] 9131 [Publisher:] MDPI [Place:] Basel [Year:] 2021
Publisher: 
MDPI, Basel
Abstract: 
Developing sustainable, carbon-neutral, and climate-resilient districts seems to be particularly challenging with respect to historic city centers. However, barriers posed by legal requirements for historical buildings are counterbalanced by opportunities because historic cities have not undergone urban modernization and did not embrace the concept of functional cities, which nowadays impedes urban sustainability transformations. Thus, this paper focuses on the relationship between cultural heritage, urban sustainable development, and climate policy. We study continuity and change in the mid-sized UNESCO World Heritage cities Potsdam (Germany) and Bern (Switzerland). These matching forerunner cities share many characteristics, which enables them to transfer policies and jointly create new solutions for common problems. We find that national context matters, but we also identify functional equivalents like referenda and active citizen participation. Despite many similarities, Potsdam is ahead of Bern with respect to the institutionalization and integration of climate mitigation and adaptation. The comparative analysis (interviews and document analysis) identifies innovations that can be transferred between the two cities (e.g., Potsdam's integrative climate policy or Bern's efforts to become a role model for stakeholders and citizens). Moreover, the challenge to coordinate heritage management and climate governance offers chances for cooperation between matching cities like Bern and Potsdam.
Subjects: 
climate policy
sustainable development
governance
UNESCO World Heritage
(urban) heritage management
historical cities
forerunner cities
matching cities
city of Potsdam
city of Bern
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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