Cities are now recognized as key stakeholders to tackle climate change (Hughes, 2019; Huxley et al., 2022). Consequently, their climate action plans have recently received increasing scholarly attention (Camponeschi, 2021; Aboagye & Sharifi, 2024). However, critical voices have stressed that most urban climate policy studies overlook the social justice impacts induced by climate policies (Long & Rice, 2019, 2021). These scholars argue that climate strategies remain articulated around a neoliberal developmental paradigm under which climate justice remains utopic (Anguelovski et al., 2019).

This article aims to contribute to this debate in two interrelated ways. First, we argue that moving towards climate justice requires exploring alternative strategies which are not conceived urgently in response to a crisis. Second, we argue that climate-related initiatives pursued by community associations and NGOs deserve greater scholarly attention.

Empirically speaking, this article draws on an international research project investigating climate adaptation policies and thermal governance strategies within the cities of Chicago, Toronto, Geneva and Zurich. All of them are “climate boomtowns”: they experience sustained growth and have not yet experienced any catastrophic events linked to climate change. In contrast, a) the level of resources and capacity of the local authorities, and b) the level of integration of social justice issues within climate strategies varies greatly from one city to the next.

Yet, our results are counterintuitive. Thanks to community groups, Chicago strongly integrates social issues within its climate strategy, while Toronto does it partially. On the other hand, despite the high level of resources and capacity of both Zurich and Geneva, their climate strategies remain mostly anchored within a green infrastructure perspective in which social justice issues are only integrated on an ex-post basis.