City membership in climate change adaptation networks

By sharing best practices and lessons learned among member cities, professional and learning networks have become prominent actors in supporting and shaping local climate change adaptation. I analyze the membership of 18 highly visible adaptation learning networks to determine what cities participate and if networks attract similar cities. I find that the formation of adaptation networks is driven by large, high-capacity cities. Adaptation networks include members of diverse sizes and planning capacity, however, cities with similar levels of social vulnerability and concern with climate change tend to participate in the same networks. Global and regional networks have different patterns of membership. These patterns of membership have important implications for diffusing climate change adaptation between cities.