Transformative capacity and local action for urban sustainability

Abstract

There is a consensus about the strategic importance of cities and urban areas for achieving a global transformation towards sustainability. While there is mounting interest in the types of qualities that increase the capacity of urban systems to attain deep transformations, empirical evidence about the extent to which existing institutional and material systems exhibit transformative capacity is lacking. This paper thereby seeks to determine the extent to which sustainability initiatives led by local governments and their partners reflect the various components that the literature claims can influence the emergence of transformative capacity as a systemic property of urban settings. Using an evaluative framework consisting of ten components of transformative capacity and associated indicators, the specific objective is to identify patterns in these initiatives regarding the presence of individual components of transformative capacity and their interrelations with other components. The analysis of 400 sustainability initiatives reveals thin evidence of transformative capacity. When detected, evidence of transformative capacity tended to emerge in relation to wider processes of institutional- and social-learning and initiatives that linked outcomes to a city-wide vision of planning and development. However, instances of such initiatives were rare. This widespread lack of evidence for transformative capacity raises concerns that this set of attributes normalised in the literature is in fact rarely found in sustainability action on the ground.

Urban transformative capacity: From concept to practice

“…Drawing on the broadest empirical account in this special issue (400 urban sustainability initiatives from across the globe), Castán Broto et al (2019) recognize only weak signals of urban TC in practice. The authors assess that most components of the urban TC framework (Wolfram 2016) appear to be present in only 10% or less of the cases.…”

“…Across all contributions it becomes evident that open and inclusive participation and the (related) empowerment of excluded and sustainability-oriented groups represent the bottom-line necessary condition for urban TC-and should thus be the first concern when approaching its development. Even though the large sample of sustainability initiatives assessed by Castán Broto et al (2019) indicates a comparatively higher incidence of inclusion and empowerment features, this is still at a low level (25-35%), does not represent mainstream urban planning and policy making, and is also unlikely to encompass those requirements emphasized by the other authors in this special issue: the pro-active involvement of children and the youth (Nordström and Wales 2019), of the urban poor (Ziervogel 2019), and of progressive innovators and communities (Wolfram 2019;Borgström 2019). More often than not, conventional governance structures and decision-making practices still reinforce exclusion and disenfranchisement, even if unintentionally.…”

“…This is clearly reflected in the very low overall incidence identified (7%-cf. Castán Broto et al 2019), as well as in the detailed qualitative accounts of disjointed, concurrent, or even conflicting stakeholder initiatives in such different national contexts as Sweden (Borgström 2019) and South Korea (Wolfram 2019). The various roles of intermediaries and their requirements are often insufficiently understood in practice, so that they turn out to be ill-equipped, mission constrained, or even entirely absent.…”

“…On the one hand, this refers to its major potential as a cross-sector, multi-scalar, and place-based action domain, linked to an intrinsic aspiration for resolving goal conflicts by applying ''comprehensive'' approaches, and the possibility to draw in diverse resources, skills, and competencies (Wolfram 2018). These are essential features that make urban planning a critical lever for practically fostering inclusion (Nordström and Wales 2019;Ziervogel 2019), identifying and addressing the intermediation gap (Wolfram 2019;Borgström 2019), applying novel formats and methods for co-producing system knowledge (Glaas et al 2019;Withycombe Keeler et al 2019), and overall strengthening especially ecosystem literacy and stewardship across urban development tasks and processes (Castán Broto et al 2019).…”

Governing Cities for Sustainability: A Research Agenda and Invitation

“…The first theme concerns the potential for new forms of urban governance to create more sustainable cities. Governance reflects broader societal transformations and is evolving as rapidly and diversely as cities themselves (Cars et al, 2017;Castán Broto et al, 2019). Innovative forms of governance are emerging that involve not just traditional policy interventions from government but new groups, roles, incentives, and cross-sectoral and crossscalar linkages both within, beyond and between cities.…”