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Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Roots and rise of Digital Social Innovation -- Chapter 3. Digital Social Innovation in the City: In search of a critical perspective -- Chapter 4. Representation: The social imaginaries of Digital Social Innovation -- Chapter 5. Re-production: Digital Social Innovation in Urban Governance -- Chapter 6. Power: The raise of Critical Digital Social Innovation.

Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is a new concept referring to social innovation initiatives that leverage digital technologies potentiality to co-create solutions to a wide range of social needs. These initiatives generally take place in urban contexts. However, in the existing literature, scarce attention is devoted to the spatial dimensions and the social, cultural or political space-related effects of DSI practices. This article suggests that a critical geography perspective can address these gaps. After a review of existing relevant contributes, the article elaborates a research agenda for a critical geography of DSI. This articulates along four research lines, including the emergence of DSI networks, the (re)production of DSI processes and socio-cultural urban space, the representations of DSI practices and the power relationships these mobilise.

Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is a new concept referring to social innovation initiatives that leverage digital technologies potentiality to co-create solutions to a wide range of social needs. These initiatives generally take place in urban contexts. However, in the existing literature, scarce attention is devoted to the spatial dimensions and the social, cultural or political space-related effects of DSI practices. This article suggests that a critical geography perspective can address these gaps. After a review of existing relevant contributes, the article elaborates a research agenda for a critical geography of DSI. This articulates along four research lines, including the emergence of DSI networks, the (re)production of DSI processes and socio-cultural urban space, the representations of DSI practices and the power relationships these mobilise.

This article analyses Bent Flyvbjerg's 'dark side of planning' theory and proposes to increase its critical strength by including, together with ideas of rationality and power, two further theoretical tools: the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and biopolitics. The potentiality of this inclusion is exemplified by the analysis provided about the influence of 18th-century colonial governmentality on the real rationality of public garden planning in the modern liberal cities of most western European colonising countries. It aims to show that Flyvbjerg's concept of 'real rationality' can be usefully regarded as the product of a broad interpretation of biopolitical technologies, including the disciplining of non-human further than human life, which makes it possible to control the 'uncivilised' instincts of society through public garden planning. This article aims to suggest, that by digging deep into the hidden rationality of planning, even in those cases in which only the progressive face of power is apparently involved, a dark side of planning is unavoidably present in the form of a disciplinary power.

While most of the existing literature on community gardens and urban agriculture share a tendency towards either an advocacy view or a rather dismissive approach on the grounds of the co-optation of food growing, self-help and voluntarism to the neoliberal agenda, this collection investigates and reflects on the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of these initiatives. It questions to what extent they address social inequality and injustice and interrogates them as forms of political agency that contest, transform and re-signify 'the urban'.Claims for land access, the right to food, the social benefits of city greening/community conviviality, and insurgent forms of planning, are multiplying within policy, advocacy and academic literature; and are becoming increasingly manifested through the practice of urban gardening. These claims are symptomatic of the way issues of social reproduction intersect with the environment, as well as the fact that urban planning and the production of space remains a crucial point of an ever-evolving debate on equity and justice in the city. Amid a mushrooming over positive literature, this book explores the initiatives of urban gardening critically rather than apologetically. The contributors acknowledge that these initiatives are happening within neoliberal environments, which promote -among other things - urban competition, the dismantling of the welfare state, the erasure of public space and ongoing austerity. These initiatives, thus, can either be manifestation of new forms of solidarity, political agency and citizenship or new tools for enclosure, inequality and exclusion. In designing this book, the progressive stance of these initiatives has therefore been taken as a research question, rather than as an assumption.The result is a collection of chapters that explore potentials and limitations of political gardening as a practice to envision and implement a more sustainable and just city.

This article addresses a new mode of planning that involves a collaboration between State, private and community actors in the context of growing urban gardening movements. It questions the view of urban gardening as a manifestation of citizens' dissensus towards administration's institutional planning, and the expression of urban 'counterplanning' whose aim is to resist the consequences of a neoliberal governmentality. Although this interpretation of urban gardening is to a certain extent true, it does not completely explain some current developments in socio-spatial planning practices. In order to fill this gap, the article advances a theoretical analysis of the emerging governmentality generated by an intensified relationship between institutional, private and community actors. The theoretical analysis is complemented by the example of representative urban gardening projects in Ghent, a dynamic and inspiring mid-size city in Belgium, providing an ideal context for exploring the transformation of planning practices and their socio-political underpinnings. The article concludes that urban gardening practices exemplify an emerging informal mode of planning supported by a new transactive governmentality, which may lead to a co-creative transformation of public urban space.

The concept of digital social innovation (DSI) refers to a fast-growing set of initiatives aimed at providing innovative solutions to social problems and needs by deploying the potential of the social web and digital media. Despite having been often interpreted as synonymous with digitally enhanced social innovation, we explain here why, in consideration of its epistemological and socio-political potentialities, we understand it as an interdisciplinary set of practices able to interpret and support the changes of a society that is more and more intrinsically virtual and physical at the same time. Notably, we briefly discuss how DSI processes can be functionally mobilized in support of different socio-political projects, ranging from the mainstream neoliberal to the revolutionary ones. Eventually, we provide a synopsis of the articles included in this thematic issue, by aggregating them accordingly to the main stakeholders promoting the DSI projects, being more bottom-up oriented or more institutional-based.

Introduction : promises and concerns of the urban century / Jeroen van der Heijden, Harriet Bulkeley, and Chiara Certomà -- Unpacking agency in global urban climate covernance : city-networks as actors, agents, and arenas / David J. Gordon -- Empowerment and disempowerment of urban climate governance initiatives : an exploratory typology of mechanisms / James J. Patterson and Nicolien van der Grijp -- Transnational municipal networks and cities in climate governance : experiments in Brazil / Fabiana Barbi and Laura Valente de Macedo -- Making climates through the city / Lauren Rickards -- Cross-movement alliances as a novel form of agency to increase socially just arrangements in urban climate governance / Karsten Schulz and Antje Bruns -- The politics of data-driven urban climate change mitigation / Sara Hughes, Laura Tozer, Sarah Giest -- Urban planning for sustainability and justice : lessons from urban agriculture / Francois Mancebo and Chiara Certomà -- Unpacking the black box of urban climate agency : (dis)empowerment and inclusion in local participatory processes / Scott Morton Ninomiya and Sarah Burch -- From public to citizen responsibilities in urban climate adaptation : a thick analysis / Caroline J. Uittenbroek, Heleen L.P. Mees, Dries L.T. Hegger and Peter P.J. Driessen -- Agency and climate governance in African cities : lessons from urban agriculture / Christopher Gore -- The effects of transnational municipal networks on urban climate politics in the global South / Fee Stehle, Chris Hohne, Thomas Hickmann, and Markus Lederer -- The politics of urban climate futures : recognition, experimentation, orchestration / Jeroen van der Heijden, Chiara Certomà, Harriet Bulkeley,

Since the 1990s, a burgeoning literature has emerged on the politics and governance of urban climate. It is now evident that urban responses to climate change involve a diverse range of actors as well as forms of agency that cross traditional boundaries, and which have diverse consequences for (dis)empowering different social groups. This book provides an overview of the forms of agency in urban climate politics, discussing the friction and power dynamics between them. Written by renowned scholars, it critically assesses the advantages and limitations of increasing agency in urban climate governance. In doing so, it sheds critical new light on the existing literature, advances the state of knowledge of urban climate governance and discusses ways to accelerate urban climate action. With chapters building on case studies from across the world, it is ideal for scholars and practitioners working in the area of urban climate politics and governance

Introduction : promises and concerns of the urban century / Jeroen van der Heijden, Harriet Bulkeley, and Chiara Certomà -- Unpacking agency in global urban climate covernance : city-networks as actors, agents, and arenas / David J. Gordon -- Empowerment and disempowerment of urban climate governance initiatives : an exploratory typology of mechanisms / James J. Patterson and Nicolien van der Grijp -- Transnational municipal networks and cities in climate governance : experiments in Brazil / Fabiana Barbi and Laura Valente de Macedo -- Making climates through the city / Lauren Rickards -- Cross-movement alliances as a novel form of agency to increase socially just arrangements in urban climate governance / Karsten Schulz and Antje Bruns -- The politics of data-driven urban climate change mitigation / Sara Hughes, Laura Tozer, Sarah Giest -- Urban planning for sustainability and justice : lessons from urban agriculture / Francois Mancebo and Chiara Certomà -- Unpacking the black box of urban climate agency : (dis)empowerment and inclusion in local participatory processes / Scott Morton Ninomiya and Sarah Burch -- From public to citizen responsibilities in urban climate adaptation : a thick analysis / Caroline J. Uittenbroek, Heleen L.P. Mees, Dries L.T. Hegger and Peter P.J. Driessen -- Agency and climate governance in African cities : lessons from urban agriculture / Christopher Gore -- The effects of transnational municipal networks on urban climate politics in the global South / Fee Stehle, Chris Hohne, Thomas Hickmann, and Markus Lederer -- The politics of urban climate futures : recognition, experimentation, orchestration / Jeroen van der Heijden, Chiara Certomà, Harriet Bulkeley,