From systemic to sustainability transitions: An emerging economy perspective on urban sprawl and the automobile revolution

Abstract

There is mounting evidence that the current model of economic development negatively affects many ecological processes and creates serious threats to the sustainability of economic processes and welfare. In response to those threats, policies have been introduced at supranational and national levels to alleviate the most burning environmental challenges and mitigate their consequences for humanity. At the same time, however, there is a growing understanding that economy–environment relations have to be analysed and approached from a geographical perspective, as this sheds more light on spatial differences and specificities, the unevenness of transition processes and their social consequences as well as the need to perform the transition towards sustainability in a spatially sensitive manner. This article seeks to reconstruct and analyse two processes – urban sprawl and the automobile revolution – that took place in the Polish urban regions during the systemic transformation period and to discuss their potential consequences for the transition to sustainability from a geographical perspective. We show that different places, due to their specificities and legacies, start sustainability transitions from different initial conditions that might affect the pace of this process as well as its environmental and social consequences.

Ecology, economy and climate crisis in European urban and regional development

“…Afeltowicz et al (2024) examine processes of 'entrepreneurial action' in the formation of more sustainable local energy clusters. Kołsut and Kudłak (2024) examine the impacts of urban structure (namely urban sprawl) on automobile use in Polish regions to highlight that environmental and social conditions around sustainability start from specific spatial structures. Affolderbach and O'Neill (2024) examine the use of green buildings to explore the coming Ecology, economy and climate crisis in European urban and regional development 1243211E UR0010.1177/09697764241243211European Urban and Regional StudiesEditorial editorial2024 Editorial together of perspectives on materialities, discourses and 'lived sustainabilities'.…”