Next generation sustainability at The University of British Columbia: the university as societal test-bed for sustainability

Robinson, John R.; Berkhout, Tom M.; Cayuela, Alberto; Campbell, Ann

doi:10.4337/9781781003640.00009

Cited by 16 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Community-based action research; transdisciplinary research; organizational learning Abbott, 2014;Lang and Wiek, 2013;Robinson et al, 2013;Rojas et al, 2007 Social Innovation Labs…”

Section: A C C E P T E D Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning through evaluation – A tentative evaluative scheme for sustainability transition experiments

Luederitz

Schäpke

Wiek

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

263

203

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Transitions towards sustainability are urgently needed to address the interconnected challenges of economic development, ecological integrity, and social justice, from local to global scales. Around the world, collaborative science-society initiatives are forming to conduct experiments in support of sustainability transitions. Such experiments, if carefully designed, provide significant learning opportunities for making progress on transition efforts. Yet, there is no broadly applicable evaluative scheme available to capture this critical information across a large number of cases, and to guide the design of transition experiments. To address this gap, the article develops such a scheme, in a tentative form, drawing on evaluative research and sustainability transitions scholarship, alongside insights from empirical cases. We critically discuss the scheme's key features of being generic, comprehensive, operational, and formative. Furthermore, we invite scholars and practitioners to apply, reflect and further develop the proposed tentative scheme -making evaluation and experiments objects of learning.

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“…Community-based action research; transdisciplinary research; organizational learning Abbott, 2014;Lang and Wiek, 2013;Robinson et al, 2013;Rojas et al, 2007 Social Innovation Labs…”

Section: A C C E P T E D Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning through evaluation – A tentative evaluative scheme for sustainability transition experiments

Luederitz

Schäpke

Wiek

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

263

203

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They differ in terms of activities, structure, organization, and coordination. Utilizers are often companies applying the living labs approach for product-service system development, enablers are often but not exclusively local governments representing the public sector, providers are mainly research institutions and universities that in some cases host living labs on university campuses (for example, Robinson et al 2013), and, finally, users are people or grassroots organizations that often initiate living labs. This basic framework draws attention to the key role played by the leading actor or coordinator in designing and implementing urban living labs.…”

Section: Innovation Pathways For Cities and The Role Of Urban Living mentioning

confidence: 99%

Utilizing Urban Living Laboratories for Social Innovation

McCormick¹,

Naumann²,

Davis³

et al. 2018

Urban Planet

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Cities have long been recognized as potential hubs of knowledge, social and cultural diversity, jobs, education, public services, and infrastructure (see Scott 1997 ; Kong 2007 ; Sassen 2011). Alongside these opportunities, however, cities also face a changing climate, reduced availability of raw materials and natural resources, and dwindling physical space for the built environment. These challenges are accompanied by increasing disparities in income and resultant social inequalities; mounting threats to human health, well-being, and food security; growing refugee and migration infl uxes; and demographic changes (for example, Coutard et al. 2014 ; Zhou 2000). These concerns and associated governance challenges increase the urgency for new socially, ecologically, and culturally sensitive approaches to urban development. Such approaches need not only to reduce human vulnerability and environmental footprints, but also to build social cohesion and support ecological sustainability, cultural integration, and the establishment of a shared identity between citizens within a just system of distribution and access to urban resources and wealth (Duxbury et al. 2016). Conventional public sector models for urban governance are often unexpected or too overstretched to adequately respond to the severity, urgency, and complexity of the outlined challenges (Kieboom 2014). Against this framework and a growing movement for citizen participation in governance processes (for example, Lowndes et al. 2001 ; Bai et al. 2010 ; Rosol 2010), many actors are working to transform urban governance to ensure that a greater diversity of voices are accounted for in decision-making processes and urban initiatives. One of the many ways in which urban actors have begun to (re)organize is via the creation of "urban living laboratories," or simply "urban living labs." Such labs exist across North and South America,

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“…The pathways vision is a strategically and structurally different approach from building new schools or faculties that offer interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum as separate degree programs (e.g., [10]), or innovative programs that are only available to a select group of students, though these are, of course, not mutually exclusive activities. The pathways approach posits that all students require access to equipping themselves with the competencies and capacities that enable them to contribute to the co-creation of a sustainable future, and so envisions providing sustainability education for students in all faculties and departments on campus [11]. The objectives of this paper are to first, outline UBC's structure that supports and enables sustainability education across the university; second, summarize the curriculum framework for sustainability at UBC; and third, present undergraduate curriculum examples that employ the UBC sustainability education framework.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%