Who Gets to Shape Climate Futures? Voice, Representation, and Urban Experimentation at the Paris Climate Academy

This paper examines the Paris Climate Academy as a site of urban democratic experimentation, foregrounding how recognition, representation, and affective politics intersect in participatory climate governance. As cities increasingly emerge as laboratories for democratic innovation amid planetary crises, the Academy offers a rich case of hybrid institutional design that combines education, activism, and municipal governance. Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork, including interviews, observations, and document analysis, the paper analyzes how aspirations for co-governance and horizontal participation confront persistent inequalities of class, race, and geography. It highlights the infra-political labor required to sustain shared governance, revealing the micro-negotiations and organizational asymmetries that shape institutional dynamics behind formal procedures. The Academy also functions as an affective, offline space for younger people, offering refuge from eco-anxiety while struggling to accommodate more confrontational emotional registers central to climate activism. These tensions underscore the limits of recognition in participatory innovations that seek inclusivity while remaining embedded in unequal urban contexts. Situating the case within emerging debates on planetary governance, the paper argues that urban experiments like the Academy serve as grounded laboratories for reimagining democratic institutions under ecological crisis, while exposing the fragility of inclusive participation when deeper structures of recognition remain unresolved.