Assessing change agency in urban experiments for sustainability transitions

Summary, in English

Experimentation has become one of the prevailing modes of governing the transition toward sustainable practices in urban environments. The spatial variation of urban sustainability transition has been attributed to a variety of conditions erected at different spatial scales. What remains less well-understood is how spatial situatedness shapes agency in urban experiments and the shapes agency can take is a field that requires further research and frameworks. The paper addresses this gap by introducing a framework from the literature on regional development, identifying three distinct types of agency that shape regional development processes. Combining this framework with a process perspective on urban experiments, we develop an analytical framework, which allows for a more granular understanding of agency in urban sustainability transitions. The analytical framework is then brought to use in a case study of an urban experiment aiming to electrify public transport in Gothenburg, Sweden.

• Author: Lukas Roebke; Markus Grillitsch; Lars Coenen
• Department/s: Department of Human Geography; CIRCLE
• Publishing year: 2022-12
• Language: English
• Pages: 214-227
• Publication/Series: Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
• Volume: 45
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.10.007
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Topic: Human Geography; Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
• Keywords: Climate action; Human agency; Institutional change; Public transport; Urban experimentation; Urban governance
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 2210-4224