Oproep voor inzendingen: speciale editie Urban Sustainability Transitions

Wetenschappelijk tijdschriftSustainability  vraagt om inzendingen voor een aankomende speciale editie met het thema Putting Sustainability Transitions into Spatial and Socio-Cultural Context’. In deze speciale editie wil het tijdschrift een bredere blik bieden om veranderdynamieken en de wijze waarop deze kunnen worden geïnitieerd, gestimuleerd, gestabiliseerd en versneld – zowel binnen steden als tussen steden en regio’s.

Lees verder in het Engels.

This special issue aims to shed light on the role of the spatial and socio-cultural context in sustainability transitions in cities and city-regions. We position that transition pathways towards sustainability will look fundamentally different in different socio, cultural, and spatial settings across cities and regions but also within cities.The urban environment as a diverse socio-cultural and political context provides the ground to shape innovations, to give rise to new forms of social organization and new cultural and political movements for sustainability in practice.

As such, challenges, opportunities, change dynamics, political agendas, grassroots actions, power constellations, actors and many other aspects that are relevant for a sustainability transition differ in large, medium and small cities as well as in villages and rural areas. Even between different urban districts, change dynamics may differ considerably. We recognize this diversity and want to further examine how it plays out in creating different forms of urban transitions and pathways to urban sustainability.

We invite papers that help us to paint a more differentiated picture on how change dynamics might be stimulated, initiated, stabilized and accelerated in different contexts within cities and across cities and regions. This includes theoretical and conceptual contributions, empirical evidence from single but preferably from multiple case studies and comparative case studies as well as papers on methods and tools to capture and map the spatial dimensions of sustainability transitions. We invite contributions from a diversity of geographies and contexts (reporting different sizes of cities) to provide grounds for our special issue working hypothesis that diversity of context, drives diversity in sustainability transitions’ patterns and pathways.

Papers can deal with all possible sustainability domains (food, energy, mobility etc.) but should highlight the socio-cultural or spatial implications and how they relate to context-specific sustainability challenges and aspirations. Papers that derive recommendations for policy makers, practitioners and urban change makers are particularly welcome.

One or more of the following research questions should be addressed:

• How do socio-cultural and spatial factors influence urban transitions to sustainability? What are the distinct drivers and barriers to urban sustainability transitions?
• How urban sustainability innovations and innovative solutions in particular shape spatial factors and urban politics in the course of urban sustainability transitions?
• How do transition dynamics and pathways towards sustainability differ in large, medium and small cities as well as in villages and rural areas?
• What is the role of different actors (citizen, public, private) and especially of community initiatives in large, medium and small cities as well as in villages and rural areas in urban sustainability transitions?
• What are strategies and mechanisms to stimulate, initiate, stabilize and accelerate sustainability transitions in large, medium and small cities as well as in villages and rural areas?
• What are the different governance approaches that can contribute to and navigate the complex context of urban sustainability transitions? What are conceptual and/or empirically-based propositions for new governance approaches to steer, facilitate and accelerate urban sustainability transitions?
• What are the paradoxes and/or oxymora in the way spatial configurations of cities influence the speed and course of urban sustainability transitions? What are critical reflection points or proposition to consider for future research in urban sustainability transitions?

You can find the link of the special issue and call for papers here.

Guest Editors

Dr. Markus Egermann

• Affiliation: Leibniz-Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development
• Interests: sustainability transition, grassroots innovations, planning, transition theory, role of civil society in sustainability transitions, local and regional governance
• E-Mail: m.egermann@ioer.de
• Tel.: +49 (0)351-4679272

Associate. Prof. Dr. Niki Frantzeskaki

• Affiliation: Dutch Research Institute for Transitions, Erasmus University
• Interests: sustainability transitions, urban environmental govenrance, scenario and pathways planning and research, nature based solutions, transition experiments, experimentation, urban living labs, knowledge co-production
• E-Mail: frantzeskaki@drift.old.tabs-spaces.nl
• Tel: +31 (0)10-4088674

Prof. Dr. Robert Knippschild

• Affiliation: Leibniz-Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development & Technische Universität Dresden
• Interests: strategies and instruments for sustainable urban development, border cities, quality of life in cities and regions, inter-municipal and cross-border cooperation, urban and regional governance
• E-Mail: r.knippschild@ioer.de
• Tel.: +49 (0)3581-7924791