Evaluative and enabling infrastructures: supporting the ability of urban co-production processes to contribute to societal change

Abstract

As widely attested in the literature, the evaluation of co-production is complex and unsuited to the use of conventional quality, monitoring and evaluation indicators. This reflects the uncertainties, co-contributory factors and time lags involved, particularly when seeking to assess institutional and wider societal effects of multistakeholder participatory processes and deliberative fora. The most widely assessed effects include the immediate outputs and outcomes of a project or activity (socalled first order effects) while wider societal or third order effects continue to be the most difficult to capture and, consequently, are the least well studied. Because of this difficulty, the intermediate, second order effects of organisational transformation and policy implementation constitute a growing challenge for evaluation. This is our focus here. After 10 years of transdisciplinary co-productive research practice, Mistra Urban Futures, as an interstitial research space bridging academia and practice working through city-based institutional partnerships called platforms, has reached a phase where some of these effects are becoming distinguishable. Accordingly, we discuss the prerequisites for co-production practitioners, including policy makers, to engage their respective organisations in transitional and incremental experimentation in order to achieve relevant institutional changes. This requires enabling infrastructures that support training, facilitation and the creation of 'safe' spaces to promote trust and legitimacy. These are needed to underpin the longlasting personal and organisational commitments which are crucial to achieve transformative organisational effects.

Demarcating transdisciplinary research in sustainability science—Five clusters of research modes based on evidence from 59 research projects

“…Since the general current discourse on transdisciplinarity is often centered on societal impacts (e.g. Lux et al, 2019; Palmer et al, 2020; Schneider, Giger, et al, 2019; Williams & Robinson, 2020), we would like to initiate a discussion about how to navigate transdisciplinary sustainability research in this field of tension between societal and scientific demands. We aimed to identify clusters of research modes, but it does turn out to be important to additionally take a close look at individual projects that stand out and actively balance societal and scientific aims (for examples of such projects, see Newig et al (2019) on a qualitative analysis of a subsample of our data).…”

From the What to the How of Keeping 1.5°C Alive: Methodological Innovations

“…Th ese are additional reasons why an experienced facilitator can be instrumental as referee and peacemaker. Such "supporting and enabling infrastructures" represent im portant but often overlooked elements of successful TD CP (Palmer et al, 2020). The diversity of stakeholders and nature of the process should be determined according to the context and purpose-there is no one-size-fits-all template.…”

Investment priorities for research and innovation in urban agri-food systems: Toward more resilient cities in the Global South

“…This introduces governance challenges and requires institutional innovation to protect and boost production, enabling equitable, low emissions marketing, and promoting waste reuse. Investment is required to design and establish contextually appropriate institutional guidelinesincluding supportive "infrastructure" (Palmer et al, 2020), particularly as many stakeholders will not have experience of working together across the various types of boundary that may be encompassed by a city region. These guidelines should be co-produced through transdisciplinary, multisectoral participation based on mutual respect for diverse experience and expertise.…”