Socio-technical transitions

Highlights
• An overview of the state of the art in community energy storage (CES) is provided.
• CES is conceptualized and analyzed as complex socio-technical system.
• Responsibility in CES design and implementation is operationalized. • CES is not only technical but also social innovation.
• The added-value of CES goes beyond economic benefits to wider societal benefits.

A B S T R A C T
The decreasing cost of energy storage and increasing demand for local flexibility are opening up new possibilities for energy storage deployment at the local level. Community energy storage (CES) is expected to contribute positively towards energy transition while accommodating the needs and expectations of citizens and local communities. Yet, the technological and societal challenges of integrating CES in the largely centralized present energy system demand for socio-technical innovation. In this article, we develop and discuss several configurations of CES. Applying system innovation and socio-technical transition frameworks and conceptualizing CES as a complex socio-technical system, different dynamics of CES in the energy systems such as coordination and interaction among actors and components of CES and the larger energy system is explored. The responsible research and innovation (RRI) framework can provide a new discourse in design and implementation of CES, facilitating the transition to a sustainable, reliable, inclusive and affordable future energy system.

Cities account for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide with a large portion of emissions generated by the transportation sector.  São Paulo, Brazil’s largest municipality, is in the early stages of a socio-technical transition to sustainable urban mobility. Socio-technical transitions theorising provides significant insights for climate mitigation and sustainable urban planning. However, most of the socio-technical-focused empirical studies focus on the Global North with limited research on the Global South.  This research fills an important gap in the literature by providing an empirical study of the creation and implementation of urban mobility policies designed to transition São Paulo, an automobile-dominant city in the Global South, towards a more sustainable low-carbon mobility pathway. We identify how the first stage of a transition away from an automobile-centred system was enabled by two key moments: a change in local government in the 2012 elections; and public protests about transport policies in 2013. These events served as windows of opportunities that converged and catalysed innovations and the implementation of new policies.

Keywords: sustainable cities; climate change; sustainable urban mobility; São Paulo; socio-technical transitions.

A B S T R A C T This article compares the current state of cycling in London to the Amsterdam cycling transition of the 1970s, applying the Multi-Level Perspective to identify potential pathways and obstacles to the wider adoption of the cycling niche in London. Our approach is two-pronged, consisting of a historical perspective to analyse the cycling transition in Amsterdam, and a policy analysis in contemporary London, based on semi-structured interviews with respondents involved in London's cycling policy. We identify factors that reinforce cycling's niche status in London, thus making the wider adoption of cycling more challenging than it was in Amsterdam. Based on our comparison, we also highlight policy, infrastructure and cultural changes that will aid in promoting a cycling transition in London.

This research examined the full range of tasks and activities that design engineers perform, how their working time is distributed among these, and how these issues influence their satisfaction with their work. Seventy-eight design engineers each carried a personal digital assistant (PDA) for twenty working days. Once every hour, they entered data into their PDAs concerning their current work tasks and satisfaction levels, using a work sampling approach. Work tasks were explored from multiple perspectives, yielding highly extensive and detailed results. A key finding was that design engineers' work involves considerable technical engineering work (62.92% of time) and socially collaborative work (40.37% of time). The results were discussed in terms of their implications for academic theory and organizational practice.

Cities play a crucial role in shaping coupled human-environment systems at local and global scales. With a view to amounting sustainability deficits, urban stakeholders thus require transformative capacity to perform radical change within and across the multiple socio-ecological and socio-technical systems embedded in cities. However, existing (transformative) ‘capacity’ concepts refer to distinct subjects and purposes and do not adequately address the particularities of urban contexts and/or practical operationalization. Therefore, this paper suggests an integrated conceptual framework for developing ‘urban transformative capacity’, drawing on contributions from a range of research areas. It identifies 10 key components and a range of factors that describe the forms of agency and interaction, development processes and relational dimensions involved in building up urban transformative capacity, emphasizing the vital role of place and scale in this. It thus establishes a baseline and direction for capacity growth. This allows recognizing the particular requirements and assets of diverse types of cities and urban contexts in the global North and South, and offers strategic orientation for urban policy making, planning practice and research.

This paper outlines an emerging Transition Design approach for addressing " wicked " problems (such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, crime, poverty, pollution, etc.) and catalysing societal transitions toward more sustainable and desirable futures. Wicked problems are " systems problems " that exist within large, socio-technical systems and therefore require new problem-solving approaches. The Transition Design Framework brings together an evolving body of practices that can be used to: 1. visualize and " map " complex problems and their interconnections and interdependencies; 2. situate them within large, spatio-temporal contexts; 3. identify and bridge stakeholder conflicts and leverage alignments; 4. facilitate stakeholders in the co-creation of visions of desirable futures; 5. identify leverage points in the large problem system in which to situate design interventions. Rather than a fixed, templatised process, the Transition Design Framework provides a logic for bringing together an evolving set of practices relevant to designing for systems level change. This paper reports on how this approach is being tested on a community based project that was informed by classroom based coursework. A new, design-led approach is needed to address the complex, wicked problems confronting societies in the 21 st century (Hughes & Steffen, 2013; Jensen, 2017) and to seed and catalyse societal transitions toward more sustainable and desirable long-term futures (Porritt, 2013, pp 274-276).

Esta tesis doctoral consiste en un proceso de construcción teórica en dos fases metodológicas de estudio de caso, sobre el papel de la cultura en la transición del sector del textil y la confección (T&C). Se orienta por sendas preguntas sobre cómo la cultura, a nivel tanto conceptual como metodológico, puede ser parte integral de la transformación de los profundos conflictos de sostenibilidad ambiental y social de este sector industrial.
En concreto, provee un marco de análisis sobre la manera en que la cultural se inserta en los procesos de transición socio-técnica y un marco metodológico basado en el diseño de experimentos culturales que, a nivel local, buscan generar cambios sostenibles y radicales a nivel del sistema.
A partir de una indagación en la literatura por el lugar de la cultura en la innovación y transformación de este sector industrial, se encuentra que ni la economía creativa ni los estudios culturales logran una inclusión orgánica de la cultura al proceso de transformación del T&C, en el primer caso, porque ofrece un modelo de análisis lineal que reduce la multiplicidad de la cultura a un input de conocimiento (simbólico, tácito, hidden, soft), mientras que el segundo caso, se restringe al consumo dejando de lado las dinámicas de producción.
Ante este gap conceptual se propone aplicar el enfoque socio-técnico al sistema del T&C, lo cual permite una mejor comprensión acerca de cómo los mecanismos culturales de deconstrucción y construcción de valores, paradigmas, significados, prácticas sociales e institucionalización sobre las que se sustenta tanto los procesos de estabilidad como de cambio del régimen dominante del fast fashion, conforman nichos de innovación a nivel micro y se convierten en poderosas categorías de análisis para comprender los procesos de transición.
La segunda fase de investigación incorpora la perspectiva del diseño como marco metodológico para generar procesos de cambio basado en experimentación cultural, mediante el caso concreto del proyecto europeo CreativeWear (2017-2019), en donde diferentes organizaciones tanto del T&C como del mundo de las artes y la creatividad testearon un modelo de innovación basado en la cultura orientado a transformar el sector.
Como resultado, se provee un marco para diseñar experimentos socio-técnicos de base cultural. Aquí la dimensión cultural de los nichos de innovación prevalece sobre los aspectos técnicos, sociales e institucionales de la experimentación, en donde las cuestiones relacionadas con el patrimonio cultural, la investigación conceptual, el papel de la artesanía, los procesos sociales de producción del T&C y las relaciones entre cultura, creatividad y tecnología cobran relevancia por su capacidad de generar nuevos procesos de significación que apuntan a cambios a nivel del sistema.

Globalization is at the root of many wicked problems to which localism has been a common response. However, such problems are usually too complex and interconnected to be resolved at the local level. Furthermore, if the future place-based lifestyles advocated by Transition Design are to be of high quality, it will be necessary to develop forms of everyday life that are self-organized and networked at multiple scales: from households through neighborhoods, cities, regions, and the planet. This symbiotic connection between different levels of scale of everyday life, from the local to the planet as a whole, would integrate two longstanding and distinct traditions-cosmopolitanism and localism-and would be the basis for a new kind of social, cultural, political and economic settlement, Cosmopolitan Localism.

Wind energy is currently one of the most mature technologies in the renewable energy sector and Europe is taking a leading role in its development. However, within Europe, there are significant differences in the advancement of wind energy: While it has come to play a significant, non-negligible role in the German energy system, the same technology could not yet establish itself in France. The niche has not succeeded in transforming the French energy system, although the surrounding conditions in France have changed significantly over the past years. To shed some light on the reasons for this particular development, this case study tracks back the development of the French wind energy sector from its beginnings up to the present. Special attention is given to the following three processes: technological change, changes in energy policy, and changes in actor constellations and the socio-economic context. Based on this extensive analysis, it is possible to work out enabling and constricting factors in this development, which have caused it to take its special “French” course. For the theoretical analysis of “the French development” the ‘Multi-Level-Perspective’ (Rip & Kemp 1998) was then applied to the empirically compiled data. This perspective gives a contextualized view of the role niches play in a technological transition process. It makes it possible to assign the enabling and constricting factors to different socio-technological constellations on three analytical levels: the wind energy niche, the established and dominant constellation in the French energy sector (the regime), and the overall macro level of society (the landscape). The perspective further helps to observe interactions between processes at all the analytical levels and to analyze the effects of the respective ‘change mechanisms’ on the socio-technical transition process. The study finally assesses whether a regime shift is actually possible in the French context.

Mobilizations occurring around just transitions and design for transition contain many potential points of overlap. They are presently remarkably disengaged. This article seeks to rectify this situation  by offering some preliminary notes on how convergences between these currents might facilitate modes of anti-racist, feminist and ecosocialist revitalize discussions on ecosocialist design futuring that can get us to think beyond degrowth/Left ecomodern binaries and toward a design politics that can support a Green New Deal. We I proceed by firstly mapping the evolution of labor- focused just transition discussions and indicate how feminist, climate justice and decolonial contributions have productively expanded and complicated understandings of the labors of transition. This paperI then goes on to suggest how such currents could productively engage further with the emerging field of design for transition. Design is not to be trusted. However, post-carbon futures are not simply going to emerge through protest and policy shifts alone. Just transitions will have to be imagined and built, fabricated and realized, coded and created. Tand this will involve the channeling of enormous amounts of creative labor and inventive praxis. It will also involve the construction of public spaces and public institutions where new knowledge practices can meet.  Bringing rRadical traditions of design, invention and innovation into dialogue with movements pushing for just transitions could make significant contributions to achieving this end.

Après avoir passé quelques années à voyager, j'ai décidé de me lancer dans l'écriture de ce mémoire. J'ai toujours eu une passion pour la beauté de l'innovation tout comme des modes de vie à caractère holistique. En contraste, peu importe l'endroit où je me trouvais, les déséquilibres socio-environnementaux m'atteignaient toujours de front.

This paper is motivated by the discussion in the literature about the strengths and weaknesses of the Multi-Level Perspective framework and aims to provide a response to a number of criticisms. The paper proposes retroduction as a transition research methodology that is used to identify and test social mechanisms for their explanatory power. The methodology consists in the joint use of case study and system dynamics as modeling and simulation method. The paper discusses how the two methods are used iteratively, and each one complements the strengths and counters the weaknesses of the other. The methodology has particular strengths and implications for the agenda of issues that research on future transitions to sustainability faces currently.

This paper analyses the main fault lines of the industrial food system and the consequences of the absolute commodification of food. Then, using the food regime theory and exploring the developments in the industrial food system (mainstream) and the urban alternative food networks (AFNs) and rural food sovereignty movement (innovative niches), the author proposes a transition pathway (the re-commonification of food) towards a food commons regime in which primacy rests in its feature as human beings’ absolute need and the different dimensions of food are properly valued, in opposition to the corporate mono-dimensional valuation of food as a commodity. In order to crowdsource this transition, this paper argues the food sovereignty movement and the AFNs need to grow together, beyond individual organisations, to knit a different and bigger food web capable of confronting the industrial food system for the common good. This ongoing transition that will span decades is to be steered by a tricentric governance system (urban and rural civic collective actions for food, partner states and social private enterprises) that enables access and promote food in all its dimensions through a multiplicity of open structures and sustainable peer-to-peer practices aimed at sharing, co-producing and trading food and knowledge. Unlike the market, the food commons are about cooperation, sharing, stewardship, equity, self-production, sustainability, collectiveness, embeddedness and direct democracy from local to global. Shifting the dominant discourse from the private sphere to the commons arena will open up a whole new world of economic, political and societal innovations, not least the Universal Food Coverage.

This chapter juxtaposes the transition management approach with the rationalities and instruments of urban planning. Considering the historic evolution and current characteristics of mainstream urban planning in theory and practice, it identifies key challenges and opportunities for engaging with transition management. The discussion underlines the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, but also their incompatibility. This implies to conceive of a dialectic relation between urban planning and transition management: Deliberately striving for coordinated independence, creating synergies and mutually compensating for critical deficits in order to effectively perform urban sustainability transformations.

Sustainable development at a global and local scale heavily depends upon the pathways taken by cities in the near future. Within scientific research, this frequently identified " urban challenge " has been recognized and addressed increasingly in urban studies, as well as in transformation studies. However, while both fields clearly overlap and effectively complement each other in this regard, the respective epistemic communities have largely remained separate so far. Therefore, this paper elaborates on the core concepts and approaches that dominate the emerging scientific debate on the role of cities in sustainability transitions. Based on a methodic literature review, it delineates the progressive convergence of the diverse disciplines involved over four major research perspectives. It equally derives key conclusions for future research and policy, highlighting the urgent need to connect the four fields identified, to link socio-technical and social-ecological system (SES) perspectives, to conceive of holistic innovations for developing new planning approaches, and to fully embrace transdisciplinarity by practicing science in society.

Recent literature has turned considerable attention to the role of policy mixes in shaping socio-technical systems towards sustainability. However, the identification of relevant policy intervention points has remained a relatively neglected topic. This is a potentially significant oversight given that such intervention points constitute a mid-step between means (particular policy instruments) and overall goals (change in the directionality of socio-technical systems). By complementing existing work on policy mixes with additional insights from transitions literature, this paper formulates a conceptual framework of six policy intervention points for transformative systems change. The coding scheme developed on the basis of this framework is used to review current literature on policy mixes in sustainability transitions. It is shown that the latter has so far primarily focused on niche-regime dynamics while largely neglecting the broader context of these interactions. We argue that adopting a wider perspective on intervention points can aid future work on policy mixes by enabling the identification of root causes and critical problems of ongoing transitions, and to spot gaps in existing policy activities. The case of the Estonian energy system is used to briefly illustrate these possibilities. Methodologically, we demonstrate the value of combining theory-based concept-formation with a systematic literature review, enabling not only a provision of a summary of existing literature but also highlighting systematic gaps in that literature.

To break away from techno-institutional lock-in in climate change and in other sustainability problems, many have focused on innovation in technological 'niches'. The destabilisation of the incumbent 'regime' has been neglected and external 'landscape' pressures under-analysed. With this in mind, this article examines the factors of regime destabilisation and forms of regime resistance in past technological transitions in energy and transport. It analyses 23 energy (electricity, heat & chemicals) and 11 transport (drive chain, networks, fuels & land planning) transitions pre-1990. Furthermore, in order to properly frame these results and make any "lessons from the past" applicable to the present, this article includes an assessment of current sustainability trends.

The key lessons from past energy transitions are that regime outsiders with the right ideology and influence on the market can destabilise the energy sector, which has traditionally had strong incumbents. As incumbents are weakened, past transport transitions show that further change may come from emphasising the Health and Lifestyle benefits of sustainability transitions.

The design for sustainability field has evolved considerably over the past few decades. Its early beginnings were marked by addressing single issues in isolation, with a primarily technologically optimistic predisposition and a focus on incremental product innovation. Currently, " the edge " of the field strategically deals with systemic issues in the longer term, with a focus on human and ecosystem well-being. This evolution has been aligned with and partly influenced by the emergence of sustainability science, and system innovations and transitions theories, as well as scientific advancement pointing to the increasing urgency of action. This article presents an overview of the emergence of Transition Design, discusses the current status of theory and practice, and provides pointers for the theoretical and practical advancement of the field.

Resumen La propuesta busca determinar el grado de influencia que ejercieron los imaginarios socio-técnicos de distintos actores en el tránsito hacia un régimen socio-técnico de saneamiento que supuso la incorporación de innovaciones tecnológicas tales como los inodoros y el sistema de alcantarillado, particularmente en dos contextos latinoamericanos: Buenos Aires y Santiago de Chile. Para esto se adoptan principalmente dos ejes teóricos. Por una parte, para exponer las características del cambio socio-técnico, se asume una perspectiva que vincula recursivamente los aspectos micro y macro sociales a través del enfoque de las transiciones socio-técnicas analizadas en multi-nivel (Geels, 2002). Por otro lado, se utiliza el enfoque de imaginarios socio-técnicos (Jasanoff y Kim, 2015) para dar cuenta de las visiones sobre " futuros deseables " que elaboraron los distintos actores del sistema y que influyeron de algún modo en las características del nuevo régimen de saneamiento. Así, pues, será también importante identificar a los actores cuyos imaginarios acabaron predominando. La indagación se desarrolla desde una mirada fenomenológica, y se ha fijado en un período de tiempo que hace necesaria una metodología de análisis interpretativo de fuentes documentales de la época considerada (principalmente, periódicos, revistas científicas, publicaciones gremiales y estatales, y actas de congresos científicos), por lo que se acompaña permanentemente de una exploración historiográfica. Se espera conocer el grado de influencia de los imaginarios socio-técnicos en el tránsito y en el establecimiento del régimen de saneamiento, y mostrar si a través de éstos puede hallarse una perspectiva de dependencia tecnológica con respecto a los países del centro. En este sentido, a modo de hipótesis se apuesta a que tanto en Argentina como en Chile, el modo cómo ciertos grupos sociales imaginan el futuro deseable, en término de imaginarios socio-técnicos, ayuda a determinar y estabilizar los distintos aspectos del nuevo régimen de saneamiento y a revelar si en ellos predomina o no una perspectiva de dependencia tecnológica en relación a los países centrales. Se presentarán resultados preliminares de investigación. Por un lado, éstos constan de un enfoque teórico-metodológico que combina perspectivas de distintos ámbitos concentrados en la relación sociedad-tecnología, como los estudios sociales de la tecnología, la historia de la tecnología y la economía de la innovación. De este modo, la indagación colabora en la comprensión de la manera cómo se instalan tecnologías originadas en el extranjero, en países latinoamericanos, y constituye una contribución a las reflexiones en torno a los cambios sociales y tecnológicos. Por otro lado, también se presentan resultados parciales acerca de los imaginarios y el tránsito socio-técnico en el caso de Santiago de Chile; así, se contribuye en el ámbito histórico rescatando imaginarios sociales manifestados en medio del cambio tecnológico de entre finales del siglo XIX e inicios del XX; y se aporta al estudio de la historia de las sociedades latinoamericanas desde el la mirada del cambio socio-técnico. Se espera discutir estos resultados para comenzar la segunda etapa de investigación sobre tránsito e imaginarios socio-técnicos en el caso de Buenos Aires.

The technology of need: technology of sustainability?
Hyper competitiveness accelerates the pace of innovation and generates an impressive increase in the number of products that are introduced in the market daily (Harvey and Griffith 2007). Nevertheless, most of these products are not designed to satisfy basic needs and their distribution among the population is uneven, increasing social exclusion.
The technological systems (Hughes 1987) in which innovations take place have,
in many cases, evident features of unsustainability. This is because there is an increased use of raw materials and energy to manufacture consumer goods (tangible or intangible)especially those oriented to satisfy the consumption aspirations of a little fraction of humankind.
This is supported by an important rise in the capabilities of knowledge production,
posing a paradox: on the one side, more efficient technologies are developed allowing
the increase of industry and services efficiency which can result in a reduction of the
environmental impact. On the other side, it increases the possibility of nature appropriation and transformation, mainly by the intensive exploitation of resources, both traditional (e.g. iron, bauxite, copper, coal, petroleum, limestone, etc.) and new ones (e.g.rare earth, coltan, Lithium salts), and the growing generation of new waste polluting.
Therefore, outputs are often unsustainable. This leads to questioning the current sociotechnical structure and the need of exploring alternatives that, inevitably, must inducea rethinking of the notions of technology, production, and consumption.

This paper discusses the crucial role cities play in the emergence and formation of grassroots socio-technical niches for sustainability transitions. Drawing on research engaged with strategic niche management, grassroots innovations and urban social innovations, it conceptualizes the interdependencies between urban contexts and grassroots niche dynamics, and explores a critical case in point: Current policy efforts in the city of Seoul to create, diversify and network social innovations in urban neighborhoods. The case illustrates how innovative place-making activities in everyday-life urban environs draws on empowerment, proximity and institutional thickness to meet basic conditions for niche formation in terms of networking, shared expectations and social learning, while also raising new issues of inclusion, legitimacy and strategy. In conclusion, four issues are highlighted that appear to decisively impact on the formation of urban grassroots niche and related sustainability transition pathways: 1) Urban empowerment capacities, 2) Embedded holistic innovation, 3) Novel community-oriented governance modes, and 4) Urban niche/regime interactions. These issues thus require particular attention in future research and policy in order to guide the coevolution of cities and urban grassroots initiatives towards sustainability.

This paper explores universal basic income (UBI) in relation to crisis, from COVID-19 to techno-economic disruptions to work and prospective postcapitalist transition. Critical debates around automation, wage labour and post-work are brought into conversation with emerging trends in urban political economy around foundational infrastructure, smart cities and platform capitalism. To deliver the socioeconomic transformations promised by UBI's advocates, it is argued that more radical structural interventions in capitalist asset ownership and property relations, alongside democratized state investment in technological development, universal basic services and infrastructure, are necessary counterparts to any sufficient UBIthat is, if we hope to construct new systems of collective coordination capable of contending with complex epidemiological, economic and ecological crises.

The goal of this paper is to provide a preliminary analysis of European ecovillages considered as rural grassroots experiments with the sustainable management of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. The article presents empirical data on the management of basic resources in 60 European ecovillages collected with an online survey in 2020. The results show that a vast majority of ecovillages pursue some self-sufficiency in food, water or energy, and that 50% of them seek some self-sufficiency in all three of these resources. However, ecovillages do not try to be completely self-sufficient but rather aim at achieving feasible levels of self-sufficiency complemented with local and regional cooperation. While the role of ecovillages in driving conventional rural growth is limited, they can help in guiding sustainability transitions by illustrating opportunities and difficulties of reducing resource consumption of settlement units without reducing personal and communal well-being.

A B S T R A C T The paper explores the ability of urban transition experiments to transform the development regime in which they are embedded. Using three European case studies – BedZed, Vauban and Hammarby – it investigates the processes of broadening and scaling-up within cities, nations and across cities globally; and finds that transition experiments do influence the development regime in which they are embedded. The impact of experiments on the development regime does vary significantly with scale. The innovative components, which are assembled in experiments (cultural, structural and practices) also seem to have differing propensity to influence the development regime at different scales. Thus, cultural innovations have a greater propensity to influence the development regime across all scales, whilst the structural and practice innovations tend to influence the development regime locally and nationally. The case studies also demonstrated the significance of context (historical and geographical) in shaping experiments and influencing the transformation process. This finding suggests that the importance of broadening in the transformation process has been overstated. The experiments show that broadening across national boundaries and for prolonged periods, can result in expanding niche-regimes which become increasingly diverse. But it does not result in transformation.

Sustainability is increasingly becoming a core focus of geography, linking sub-fields such as urban, economic, and political ecology, yet strategies for achieving this goal remain illusive. Socio-technical transition theorists have made important contributions to our knowledge of the challenges and possibilities for achieving more sustainable societies, but this body of work generally lacks consideration of the influences of geography and power relations as forces shaping sustainability initiatives in practice.

Effective policy mixes are expected to accommodate uncertainties in the future policy context by being flexible and adapt over time in expectation of a range of anticipated and unanticipated conditions. In response to shifts in the future policy context, while policy changes can manifest as increments to status quo over time, policymakers may also need to face the possibility of making major policy shifts to enable the transition into more appropriate policy regimes. In the context of socio-technical transitions, the switch to new policy alternatives can be facilitated by incorporating new policy actions into the suite of current policy strategies early on, which can also help accommodate the long lead-times on some decisions and actions. This paper is a conceptual piece that focuses on integrating policy design thinking into the crafting of conscious policy choices and mixes to enable socio-technical transitions while considering the likely changes in the future policy context.

Urban transformation research forms an emergent interdisciplinary field with open boundaries that combines complex system studies and urban studies. It explores patterns and dynamics of change linking cities and diverse socio-technical systems and social-ecological systems across levels and scales, and develops new forms of intervention to foster their sustainability. This paper identifies and maps out the current status in this field and derives strategic recommendations for future research. It delineates a spectrum of recurrent epistemologies concerned with either system change, urban change or urban/system interactions, linked to an emphasis on urban metabolism, resilient communities and ecosystems, grassroots innovations or urban innovation systems. Moreover, seven key factors co-shaping urban transformations are recognized (agency, politics, capacity, policy, experiments, foresight and geography). To better exploit potential synergies between existing strands and address gaps in the light of imminent urban sustainability challenges, future urban transformation research should 1) Share a relational perspective that connects the above epistemologies; 2) Identify and engage with the spatial-institutional challenges of urban transformations; 3) Move towards multi-system approaches linking various sectors and domains; and 4) Focus on transformative capacity and its agency components as an empowering lever and guide for systemic urban change.

Transitioning from current resource management practice dominated by linear
economic models of consumption and production, to circular models of resource use, will
require insights into the stages and processes associated with socio-technical transitions.
This paper is concerned with transitions in practice. It explores two frameworks within the
transitions literature—the multi-level perspective and transition management theory—for
practical guidance to inform a deliberate transition in practice. The critical futures literature
is proposed as a source of tools and methods to be used in conjunction with the transition
frameworks to influence and enable transitions in practice. This enhanced practical
guidance for initiating action is applied to a specific context—transitioning the Australian
metals sector towards a circular economy model. This particular transition case study is
relevant because the vision of a circular economy model of resource management is
gaining traction internationally, Australia is significant globally as a supplier of finite
mineral resources and it will also be used in a collaborative research project on Wealth
from Waste to investigate possibilities for the circular economy and metals recycling.

please send an email to [email protected] if you want to receive the PDF

Sustainable entrepreneurs are key actors in sustainability transitions; they develop needed innovations, create markets,
and pressure incumbents. While socio-technical transitions literature is well developed, questions remain in terms of
(1) the different roles that sustainable entrepreneurs can play in sustainable transitions, and (2) how best to empower
these roles. To explore these challenges, we review literature and construct a framework combining the multilevel
perspective and entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective. We apply this framework to the context of climate-smart
agriculture in (Western and Central) Europe. By analysing semi-structured interview data (n=27) we find that
sustainable entrepreneurs are constrained by ineffective policy, resistant users, as well as novel alignment issues within
the supply chain. We focus on the role of sustainable entrepreneurs as coordinators of action rather than developers of
technological innovation within transition contexts characterised by low landscape pressures, large unmotivated
incumbent firms, low consumer awareness and demand, and unincentivized users (farmers).

In response to calls to develop more politically-informed transition studies, a burgeoning literature on discourse-transition complementarities and niche-regime interactions has recently emerged. This paper draws these strands of literature together in order to develop a discursive approach that investigates the process by which actors use language to build or erode the legitimacy of socio-technical innovations and their niches within transition episodes. Conceptualizing this process in terms of multi-dimensional discursive interactions, we adopt a discursive approach to further scrutinize: (1) the way in which actor groups depicted within the multi-level perspective struggle to frame innovations using narrative work and (2) how these narratives are formed through the ideational capacity of actors to link the content and context of an innovation. We demonstrate this approach by applying it to the case of PV diffusion in Ontario, Canada. Our findings contribute to the development of a more politically-sensitive view of transitions as well as recent work on incumbent-challenger interactions and discourse-transition crossovers. Beyond this, we corroborate and extend several observations in the transition literature, including the semi-coherent nature of the regime, the social construction of the landscape, and the prevalence of fit-and-conform orientations within niche empowerment strategies. However, findings also indicate that strategic orientations can be subtle and intermeshed, perhaps explaining why fit-and-conform orienta-tions appear more prevalent.