Sensemaking for entangled urban social, ecological, and technological systems in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Our urban systems and their underlying sub-systems are designed to deliver only a narrow set of human-centered services, with little or no accounting or understanding of how actions undercut the resilience of social-ecological-technological systems (SETS). Embracing a SETS resilience perspective creates opportunities for novel approaches to adaptation and transformation in complex environments. We: i) frame urban systems through a perspective shift from control to entanglement, ii) position SETS thinking as novel sensemaking to create repertoires of responses commensurate with environmental complexity (i.e., requisite complexity), and iii) describe modes of SETS sensemaking for urban system structures and functions as basic tenets to build requisite complexity. SETS sensemaking is an undertaking to reflexively bring sustained adaptation, anticipatory futures, loose-fit design, and co-governance into organizational decision-making and to help reimagine institutional structures and processes as entangled SETS.

Integrative approaches to urban resilience: Evaluating the efficacy of resilience strategies in mitigating climate change vulnerabilities

“…Furthermore, technological advancement is integral to monitoring and managing green spaces effectively while adhering to SETS strategies that foster resilient urban ecosystems [ 72 , 73 ]. Finally, technological innovations play a vital role in terms of monitoring green spaces effectively and complying with SETS strategies [ 74 , 75 ]. A preliminary exploration of resilience strategies provides the basis for further discussion in subsequent sections.…”

Infrastructure and the cognitive ecosystem: an irrevocable transformation

“…Infrastructure organizations will need to commit to sustained change that restructures and reorients the organization within a cognitive ecosystem where knowledge is generated, and control of services is wielded by myriad stakeholders. It may be that the successful infrastructure agency of the future is one that positions itself to build consensus on how services are produced and consumed (Muñoz-Erickson et al 2017) and away from legacy models that emphasize control over services (Chester et al 2023), and is in a constant state of reinvention keyed to the accelerating cycle times of relevant technologies and the cognitive ecosystem itself.…”

The relational shift in urban ecology: From place and structures to multiple modes of coproduction for positive urban futures

“…Smart city technologies provide innovative solutions for multiple purposes, such as stewardship, monitoring, maintenance, coproduction, co-implementation, and co-management of urban ecological systems (Li and Nassauer 2021 ; Wellmann et al 2023 ). Smart solutions have facilitated a transition from a socio-ecological view of urban systems, where technology is a subset of social systems, to a social-ecological-technological view that explicitly recognizes the multiple complex and dynamic interactions between social, ecological, and technological components (Kim and Son 2022 ; Chester et al 2023 ).…”

“…Not only is this a new strategy for urban ecology, it is also the case for urbanism itself (Graham and Marvin 2001 ; Ellin 2013 ; Brenner and Schmid 2014 ). Change is now faster than empirical rules can keep up (Chester et al 2023 ).…”

“…In other words, coproduction of knowledge is a highly relational activity. Not only is actionable knowledge coproduced, but to return to the fundamental fact that “nature” is itself coproduced (Cronon 1995 ), the actions of management, policy, and design interventions coproduce a new version or ontology of the system of interest (Cook et al 2021 ; Chester et al 2023 ). The city is as much a coproduct (Rademacher and Sivaramakrishnan 2017 ) as is nature in the contemporary world (Cadenasso et al 2022 ).…”