Cities and Systemic Change for Sustainability: Prevailing Epistemologies and an Emerging Research Agenda

Abstract

Abstract:Cities are key for sustainability and the radical systemic changes required to enable equitable human development within planetary boundaries. Their particular role in this regard has become the subject of an emerging and highly interdisciplinary scientific debate. Drawing on a qualitative literature review, this paper identifies and scrutinizes the principal fields involved, asking for their respective normative orientation, interdisciplinary constitution, theories and methods used, and empirical basis to provide orientations for future research. It recognizes four salient research epistemologies, each focusing on a distinct combination of drivers of change: (A) transforming urban metabolisms and political ecologies; (B) configuring urban innovation systems for green economies; (C) building adaptive urban communities and ecosystems; and (D) empowering urban grassroots niches and social innovation. The findings suggest that future research directed at cities and systemic change towards sustainability should (1) explore interrelations between the above epistemologies, using relational geography and governance theory as boundary areas; (2) conceive of cities as places shaped by and shaping interactions between multiple socio-technical and social-ecological systems; (3) focus on agency across systems and drivers of change, and develop corresponding approaches for intervention and experimentation; and (4) rebalance the empirical basis and methods employed, strengthening transdisciplinarity in particular.

Grassroots Initiatives as Sustainability Transition Pioneers: Implications and Lessons for Urban Food Systems

“…By explicitly engaging with both old, "lost" traditions and futuristic experiments, they moreover break with traditional time, thereby displaying temporal heterogeneity [2,82,109]. Their transformative potential depends on the local institutional cultures and practices as much as on trans-local relations [29,34,67]. A common obstacle grassroots initiatives encounter is the absence of resources such as financing, active members and time [39,57,64,70,[77][78][79].…”

Adoption and Use of Low-Carbon Technologies: Lessons from 100 Finnish Pilot Studies, Field Experiments and Demonstrations

“…This perspective encapsulates the view of those undertaking local experimentation, including non-scientists, as a new form of societal knowledge production, emphasizing a feedback cycle of development, testing, evaluation and informing best practice management [16], or foresight, experimentation and learning in the management of societal transitions [22,23]. Experiments in this line of thought support learning about the possibilities and problems of new governance structures, or new technologies from a governance perspective.…”

Steering transformations under climate change: capacities for transformative climate governance and the case of Rotterdam, the Netherlands

“…While climate governance in cities only represents one scale for addressing climate change, cities have become recognised as an increasingly important one both to prepare for the profound impacts of climate change urban populations and to mobilise the potential of cities for contributing to global resilience and sustainability (Castán Broto 2017;Wolfram and Frantzeskaki 2016). Additionally, urban climate governance is marked by complex multi-level and transnational relationships, including regional planning processes and transnational city networks (Castán Broto 2017).…”