Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity

Abstract

Cities, and the networked infrastructures that sustain urban life, are seen as crucial sites for creating more sustainable futures. Yet, although there are many plans, the realisation of sustainable urban infrastructures on the ground is uneven. To develop better ways of understanding why this is the case, the paper makes a conceptual contribution by engaging with current understanding of urban sustainability transitions, using urban sustainable mobility as a reference point. It extends these insights to argue that urban transitions are not about technological or social innovation per se, but about how multiple innovations are experimented with, combined and reconfigured in existing urban contexts and how such processes are governed. There are potentially many ways in which urban sustainable mobility can be reconfigured contextually. Innovation is in the particular form of reconfiguration rather than individual technologies. To make analytical sense of this multiplicity, a preliminary framework is developed that offers the potential to think about urban transitions as contextual and reconfigurational. We argue that there is a need to embrace multiplicity and to understand its relationships to forms of reconfiguration, through empirical exploration and further theoretical and conceptual development. The preliminary framework is a contribution to doing so and we set out future directions for research.

Unpacking the Formation of Favourable Environments for Urban Experimentation: The Case of the Bristol Energy Scene

“…To redress these issues, we conceptualise niche formation as occurring through a process of contextual reconfiguration, whereby socio-technical experiments, modes of governing and conceptions of sustainability are assembled, reconfiguring the urban context in a process that could culminate on urban transitions [4]. To examine that process in detail, we analysed different settlements, patterns of experimentation and modes of governing.…”

“…Rather than focusing only on promising experiments feeding into niches that emerge and grow at a trans-local level, we now explore the building blocks for an approach that takes on the standpoint of a place while building on the insights from the local-global model. To address the issue of multiplicity, we draw on a broader understanding of urban experimentation recently proposed by Hodson et al [4]. They focus on how a particular place is reconfigured through a wider set of urban experimental processes 'of assembling technologies, social interests, and new modes of governing into place-based configurations and learning about these processes of embedding an infrastructure or a scheme in a particular place' (p. 6).…”

“…Our interest in exploring patterns of experimentation stems from acknowledging the multiplicity of urban experimental processes, which demands attention to who carries out these processes, how they are being framed, and whether they are complementary, competing or co-existing with one another [4]. For example, in a given settlement, do-it-yourself community projects aimed at local empowerment may develop with complementarities with government-led experimental business models for city-wide energy provision aimed at economic development, and in another settlement, the relationships between these initiatives might become competitive.…”

“…Analysing the actors involved, framings and complementarities, competition and coexistence between urban experimental processes [4] was a useful first step. However, in contexts encompassing a large number of such processes, it is hard to interpret these iterations.…”

“…Urban experiments are being mobilised not merely to study the city but also to probe diverse urban futures, harness innovations to transform the city and its various sociotechnical systems [4][5][6] and contribute to developing the capacities required for transformation [7]. Proponents of urban experimentation have devised and implemented a variety of experimental spaces, such as urban living laboratories, transition arenas, platforms, and experimental districts, which are the object of a thriving body of literature [8][9][10][11][12].…”