The Acceleration of Urban Sustainability Transitions: A Comparison of Brighton, Budapest, Dresden, Genk, and Stockholm

Franziska Ehnert, Niki Frantzeskaki, Jake Barnes, Sara Borgström, Leen Gorissen, Florian Kern, Logan Strenchock and Markus Egermann
Additional contact information
Franziska Ehnert: Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Weberplatz 1, 01217 Dresden, Germany
Niki Frantzeskaki: Dutch Research Institute for Transitions, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Postbus 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Jake Barnes: Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, Sussex House, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK
Sara Borgström: Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Kungl Tekniska Högskolan, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Leen Gorissen: Studio Transitio, Straal 9, BE-2490 Balen, Belgium
Florian Kern: Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, Sussex House, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK
Logan Strenchock: Campus Sustainability Office, Central European University, Nador u. 9, 1051 Budapest, Hungary
Markus Egermann: Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Weberplatz 1, 01217 Dresden, Germany

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-25

Abstract: City-regions as sites of sustainability transitions have remained under-explored so far. With our comparative analysis of five diverse European city-regions, we offer new insights on contemporary sustainability transitions at the urban level. In a similar vein, the pre-development and the take-off phase of sustainability transitions have been studied in depth while the acceleration phase remains a research gap. We address this research gap by exploring how transitions can move beyond the seeding of alternative experiments and the activation of civil society initiatives. This raises the question of what commonalities and differences can be found between urban sustainability transitions. In our explorative study, we employ a newly developed framework of the acceleration mechanisms of sustainability transitions. We offer new insights on the multi-phase model of sustainability transitions. Our findings illustrate that there are no clear demarcations between the phases of transitions. From the perspective of city-regions, we rather found dynamics of acceleration, deceleration, and stagnation to unfold in parallel. We observed several transitions—transitions towards both sustainability and un-sustainability—to co-evolve. This suggests that the politics of persistence—the inertia and path dependencies of un-sustainability—should be considered in the study of urban sustainability transitions.

Keywords: urban sustainability transitions; acceleration; comparative case study; European city-regions; upscaling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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