The purpose of this paper is two-fold. The first part diagnoses three limitations of current thought on the urban governance of climate change. First, current action emerges within a wave of urban optimism with limited historical sensitivity to previous climate change action. Second, the mobile nature of climate change policies is overlooked in studies that emphasize cities as the unit of analysis for climate action. Third, the focus on global cities or alternative locations that are constructed as exemplary sites takes attention away from the ordinary contexts of action where climate action is most needed. The second part of the paper uses this analysis as the main motivation for a call for studies of climate change governance to engage with the messiness of urban knowledge and action. Three theories of messiness are put forward. The first relates the idea of governance as messiness to postcolonial analyses of radical environmental action. The second emphasizes the messiness embedded in current methods of knowing the city, and the logic of situated knowledge. The third emphasizes messiness in the relations between the body, society and the emotions characterizing the interactions of everyday life.