Governing Sponge City Transitions: Policy Objectives and Socio‐Technical Change

ABSTRACT

In theory, climate adaptation policy cycles can be framed as being harmonized and goal‐oriented governance processes. Yet any examination of climate adaptation in cities reveals persistent tensions between this logic and the diverse forces shaping adaptation in practice. This article examines these tensions through efforts to realize climate‐resilient sponge cities in Germany and Austria. Drawing on qualitative interviews and document analysis, we examine the socio‐technical conditions shaping sponge city‐making across scales, and analyze how this process is operationalized and governed locally in Offenbach am Main, Bochum, and Vienna. We argue that sponge city‐making unfolds through entangled refinement : actors iteratively and selectively rework infrastructural, institutional, and knowledge arrangements to pursue particular adaptation futures amid uncertainty, fragmentation, and competing values. Competing descriptions of restored urban water cycles influence how sponge urbanism gets translated into goal‐driven urban renewal programs. This process drives new logics of spatial differentiation and reshapes the problems at the core of adaptation, as concerns about vegetation livability, health, and justice push against a predominant logic of stormwater control. Conceptually, we position sponge urbanism as a prism revealing the diverse practices, materials, and meanings that constitute urban climate adaptation, and theorize the operationalization of climate adaptation visions as a site of experimental governance.