Implementing climate policies and programmes in cities requires substantial investments that inevitably entangle climate action with urban climate finance—the mechanisms and practices city governments use to pay for climate efforts. Here we use US cities as a case study to examine how climate finance impacts, and is impacted by, the pursuit of urban climate action and climate justice. Drawing on 34 expert interviews, we show how municipal financial decisions and budgetary practices are shaping how, when and for whom cities are responding to climate change. We demonstrate how public spending decisions are intertwined with the logics of debt financing and examine the impacts of these relationships on cities’ climate investments. We showcase the structuring impacts of finance on climate action and the built environment, and we introduce pathways through which climate and justice considerations are already being integrated into, and potentially transforming, municipal finance in the United States.

在城市实施气候政策和计划需要大量投资，这不可避免地将气候行动与城市气候融资（城市政府用于支付气候努力的机制和做法）联系在一起。在这里，我们以美国城市为案例研究，研究气候融资如何影响城市气候行动和气候正义的追求，以及如何受到城市气候行动和气候正义的影响。根据 34 位专家访谈，我们展示了市政财务决策和预算实践如何影响城市应对气候变化的方式、时间和对象。我们展示了公共支出决策如何与债务融资的逻辑交织在一起，并研究了这些关系对城市气候投资的影响。我们展示了金融对气候行动和建筑环境的结构性影响，并介绍了气候和正义考虑因素已经融入并可能改变美国市政财政的途径。