ClimSmartLok – Climate Smart City Hamburg: Urbane Transformationslabore im Stadtteil Lokstedt

The research project ClimSmartLok analyzes approaches to climate protection in the fields of household energy, mobility and waste man-agement at the municipal level, using examples from the district Lokstedt in Hamburg. As a starting point, a transformative methodology is used to examine the behavior and practices of the citizens. HCU’s research focus is on climate change pioneers.
ClimSmartLok explores the potentials of climate-friendly transformations of existing quarters, designed to enable the inhabitants to make their everyday actions more resource-efficient. At the same time, types of integrative governance are explored. In particular, this refers to the question of how political-administrative forms of regulation can contrib-ute to climate-friendly urban development, which is more focused on the everyday practices of the citizens.
Within the framework of ClimSmartLok, the HCU is researching the personal motives and development processes of climate change pio-neers in Hamburg. These are persons who have already aligned their lifestyle with climate protection or have developed innovations and thus can be regarded as pioneers for urban transformation. Their activities are examined with regard to the pioneers’ possible role(s) in urban cli-mate protection. Transition theory and bodies of work from the political, organizational and spatial sciences serve as the theoretical reference framework for the role of promotors (e.g. Kristof 2010) and key figures (e.g. Kilper & Christmann 2016) in change and innovation processes. This forms the basis of the empirical analysis of activities and character-istics of local Hamburg pioneers.