Urban Sustainability Transitions Systems and Agency Dynamics Dr. - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Urban Sustainability Transitions

Systems and Agency Dynamics

• Dr. Niki Frantzeskaki

Associate Professor Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands email: n.frantzeskaki@drift.eur.nl @NFrantzeskaki 21.10.2015 Copenhagen University, Denmark

Concepts to understand today

Sustainability transitions Systems Agency

Sustainability Transitions

Understanding urban complexity

• Complex urban problems – persistent problems

– Resist ‘incremental’ policy interventions >> temporary fixes – Ignore optimization efforts >> re-occurring & being reinforced

• Current unsustainability – multiple crises << >> symptoms

– Ecological crisis >> exceeding planetary boundaries – Social crisis >> not-securing justice and equity in opportunities and capacity to deal with environmental vulnerabilities – Economic crisis >> welfare state crumpling and on a retreat

• Solutions mismatching – scale <<readiness >> context

– Scale mismatch>> too small to deal with large-scale problems – Context mismatch >> not easy to transfer across contexts – Time mismatch >> social and technological cycles not synchronised

Radical changes are required

• To break-through deep-rooted practices and ways of organising
• To rethink assumptions and evaluate needs and lifestyles
• To search for solutions differently>> fit-for-purpose & fit-in-context

Sustainability Transitions

“a radical innovation in:

• structures(infrastructures, ways of organisation)
• cultures (assumptions, perceptions)
• practices (acts, ways of operation)

that unfolds in phases with different distinct dynamics”

(Frantzeskaki and De Haan, 2009)

7

“radical transformation towards a sustainable society, as a response to a number of persistent problems confronting contemporary modern societies”

(Grin, Rotmans and Schot 2010)

“more (co-)evolution than revolution”

(Rotmans et al 2001)

“tipping towards sustainability with social and governance innovations”

(Loorbach et al 2011)

what are transitions?

Product Innovation Process Innovation Systeem Innovation

Transition “Innovation Cascade” (Rotmans 2005)

• long-term
• complexity
• uncertainty

8

What the history shows Transitions are long-term processes; 25-50 years to structurally change. Can we afford to wait the course of history? ACCELERATION

Different transition schools >> conceptual frameworks

MULTI-REGIME DYNAMICS (Frantzeskaki, Grin and Thissen, 2016)

Definition of a Sustainability Transition

Transition ≈

• long-term process (> 1 generation)
• radical - fundamental - structural change
• system level
• high levels of complexity and uncertainty

=> direction: sustainability

15

Systems

Complex Adaptive Systems

• The behavior of the whole (=the system) exhibits properties

that cannot be traced back to the parts = complex

• Memory and learning mechanisms = adapts to context and

changes behavior over time

• A small stimuli can result in changes of high magnitude =

stimulus-response relations not linear and change over time

Complexity means…

• society cannot be ‘managed’
• societal change cannot be planned
• humans are part of the system >> create complexity

But also…

• a small intervention can make a very great difference
• power of diversity => learning and experimenting
• need for knowledge about the system!

19

Sustainability Transitions Studies

• Understand societal systems as complex adaptive systems

that learn and self-organise and are difficult to steer

• Conceptualise that current unsustainability is deeply rooted

to the way societal systems are organised and structured

• Propose experimentation as a way to seed and enable radical

changes that may progressively build into a fundamental change – a transition to sustainability-

MULTI-REGIME DYNAMICS (Frantzeskaki, Grin and Thissen, 2016)

Agency

“Frontrunner” OR Agent of Change Transformative Agency

Connectivity & Sustainability Transitions

• Connections between agents
• Connecting innovations to problems
• Between agents: Forms of transformative agency

Emerging Facilitated Action-oriented

Transition Initiatives Partnerships

Process-oriented

Intermediate Organisations Transition Arenas Urban Living Labs

Transition Initiatives

• A locally-based activity which drives transformative change

towards environmental sustainability of existing societal systems in multiple dimensions across multiple domains.

• multiple dimensions : infrastructure and technologies,
• rules and norms, routines and practices.

POWERED BY DRIFT, ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM

POWERED BY DRIFT, ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM

Predevelopment (2003-2010) Take-off (2010-2013)

2010 2009 2008 2012

Transition Initiatives multiplying and connecting Milan, Italy (source: Silvestri and Frantzeskaki, submitted)

Transition Initiatives - Challenges

• Synergy: Trust and Social Capital; important

for bottom-up transformations

• Tension: Exclusivity

‘us’ versus ‘them’ ‘ strong identity’ versus ‘inclusivity’ ‘whose rights, whose dreams’

Transition Arenas

• Participatory approach to bring together change agents from

community, policy and business

• Creating transition governance contexts : transition arenas to form

visions, agendas and strategic pathways

• Purposive and designed for co-creating transformative narratives

and transformative agendas for sustainability action

Transition Team

• Experimentation

& Implementation

• Partnerships

& Broadening

• Preparation
• Exploration
• Problem structuring

& Envisioning

• Backcasting

& Agenda Building

Transition Arena Transition Experiments Transition Networks

MUSIC Project – Guidance Manual Download: http://www.drift.eur.nl/?p=2796

33

Illustration – Andrew Siddall; (MUSIC Aberdeen Transition Magazine, 2013)

Urban Living Labs

sites devised to design, test and learn from social and technical innovation in real time

Connectivity & Sustainability Transitions

• Connections between agents – Transformative agency
• Connecting innovations to problems
• Between agents: Forms of transformative agency

Emerging Facilitated Action-oriented

Transition Initiatives Partnerships

Process-oriented

Intermediate Organisations Transition Arenas Urban Living Labs

Transition Arenas & ULLs Challenges

• Synergy: Governance and institutional synergies via

challenging ways of working, thinking and relating

• Tension: Openness

‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’ ‘change agency’ versus ‘connecting agency’

38

Transition initiatives need mediating institutions across institutional scales that require a change in the role of local government

Network of urban agriculture initiatives that mediated with the Municipality of Milan Public-private partnership with a facilitative role on realising a sustainability vision and enables the existence of transition initiatives in Rotterdam

Intermediary Organisations

• Synergy: Governance synergy to channel

messages and lessons across scales

• Tension: Temporality

‘here and now’ need/mentality ‘context’ locked

Intermediary Organisations - Challenges

• Synergy: Resource synergies including knowledge
• Tension: Mission-blinded

Partnerships - Challenges

Connectivity & Sustainability Transitions

• Connections between agents – Transformative agency
• Connecting innovations to problems
• Between agents: Forms of transformative agency

Emerging Facilitated Action-oriented

Transition Initiatives Partnerships

Process-oriented

Intermediate Organisations Transition Arenas Urban Living Labs

Cities as places for sustainability transitions

• The majority of the world’s population lives in them
• They consume large volumes of resources and produce equally

large amounts of waste – they are therefore susceptible to efficiency policies

• They play a key role in making sustainable development relevant
• n a local scale
• They can be powerful actors in promoting sustainable

development towards other scale levels – e.g. national governments – and frequently have the resources necessary to pilot small-scale initiatives

• They tend to have considerable experience managing the

complex systems that drive unsustainability (e.g. energy, transport), and are therefore ideally placed to enact strategies to improve them.

Partnerships create synergies

Social synergy: trust creation, ideas and beliefs sharing, express concerns Governance and Institutional synergy:

• create and enable integration between departments and different policies
• create policy synergy by “combining the different perspectives of each

partner” resulting in innovative solutions and arrangements

• challenge and innovate ways of working

Resource synergy (including knowledge resources):

• pool resources together (expertise, funds, skills) and maintain social and

economic profitability

• manage and maintain infrastructures on the long-term in a resource

efficient and effective manner

44

Transition Governance

• Processes to enable progressive transformations:

incremental change builds progressively to fundamental shifts

• Interventions that establish a positive path-dependency:

short-term and long-term actions are connected and contribute to the roll-out of deliberate strategic action for sustainability

• Set-up and learn from experimentation:

governance, social and technological experimentation as situated learning experiences that can catalyse transition agendas and pathways

 Envisioning Backcasting

Agenda

Setting

ARENA PROCESS CURRENT SITUATION Short-Term Actions Medium-Term Actions Long-Term Actions VISION  Problem Structuring



Experiments / Pilots

46

Partnerships create synergies

Social synergy: trust creation, ideas and beliefs sharing, express concerns Governance and Institutional synergy:

• create and enable integration between departments and different policies
• create policy synergy by “combining the different perspectives of each

partner” resulting in innovative solutions and arrangements

• challenge and innovate ways of working

Resource synergy (including knowledge resources):

• pool resources together (expertise, funds, skills) and maintain social and

economic profitability

• manage and maintain infrastructures on the long-term in a resource

efficient and effective manner

47

Partnerships are versatile in role uptaking

• Strategic role: processes and activities of setting long-term goals, policy

development, planning, vision, values, identity, culture of the city

• Tactical role: designing steering activities, programs, funding,

establishment of networks and/or partnerships

• Operational role: implementing and managing policy action plans,

infrastructure plans and assets

• Reflexive role: monitoring, assessing and evaluating existing policies and

assets and their interaction with citizens.

• For diagnosing the type of activities (strategic, tactical, operational and

reflexive) a partnership undertakes, we need to understand and map the relations between different agencies (and/or partnerships) within and across the multiple governance levels.

48