Sustainability in a climate of austerity: responses from UK-city-regions Title: Sustainability in a climate of austerity: Responses from UK city-regions

The economic and financial crises experienced in recent years have put pressure on governments around the world to focus their efforts on promoting and implementing structural reforms in strategic areas like education, health, labour and product markets, competition, taxes and innovation. Many governments are already taking some measures to "green" their approaches to economic revival, addressing recovery by supporting sustainable long-term growth. A recent report published by the OECD (2009) argues that the economic and financial down-turn provides both an opportunity and an incentive to promote a greener model of economic growth and development: a green growth that ensures natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which human health and well-being relies. Urban retrofitting is becoming critical to the achievement of ambitious carbon reduction targets and to purse a green growth agenda. In order to realize the ecological and economic benefits of retrofit, cities are continually searching for a "fix" that allows them to upscale retrofit from a largely ad hoc and piecemeal activity into strategic and systemic programmes that transform existing cities. It is with the issue and purpose of such experimentation and efforts to integrate retrofit and governing that we are concerned in this paper, drawing, from a research study that investigates lessons and practices in sustainable retrofitting 1 in two core UK city-regions (Cardiff -South East Wales and Greater Manchester). National priorities, policies and programmes create possibilities and constraints on those governing city-regions in their construction of retrofit strategies. In the UK since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007 the ways in which retrofit has been promoted across a range of UK national government bodies has varied. Elements of both a low carbon industrial interventionism and seeing retrofit as a market making opportunity were inherent in the last 1 Retrofit is defined for the purpose of the paper as the "directed alteration of the fabric, form or systems which comprise the built environment in order to improve energy, water and waste efficiencies" A narrative for retrofit has recently been developed in response of a complex set of pressures and drivers ranging from climate, energy and fuel poverty, in the two city-regions. This has resulted in a number of key policy objectives and programmes developed to address urban and regional economic development. From a first reading, these responses seem to follow common rhetoric of sustainability and economic growth in both the case study regions. Nevertheless, the two different governance settings and different historical development in the two city regions have generated different responses towards a transition to sustainable retrofit in a climate of austerity. Greater Manchester: Retrofitting ON and IN The governance framework in GM has recently changed from a two-tier governing has created the conditions for an era of austerity within which efforts to constitute the capacity to shape retrofitting strategies needs to be understood. A strategy for retrofitting Greater Manchester housing stock is set out in the low carbon housing retrofit strategy and the wide range of retrofit activities illustrate two emergent and distinct pathways for urban retrofit. On the one hand, there is a dominant national/cityregional policy and business led view of the relationship between Greater Manchester and retrofit which is "top down" and aims at: reducing emissions in relation to Greater Manchester"s carbon reduction emissions targets in a broader national context; as a way of 2 This is a national policy established by the post-2010 coaltiion government and run from the Department of Energy & Climate. The Green Deal establishes "a framework to enable private firms to offer consumer energy efficiency improvements to their homes, community spaces and business at no upfront costs, and recoup payments through a charge in instalments on the energy bill" (Department of Energy & Climate Change, 2010:5). 3 Where the strategic level of Greater Manchester County Council shared power with the 10 metropolitan boroughs that constituted it. 4 Through the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) and associated agencies (see for instance Manchester which is more "bottom up", embedded in local contexts with manifold motivations for retrofit and community engagement. These initiatives emerge primarily fro