Urban Transitions and Transformations

The STRN community has increasingly been paying attention to the spatial dimensions of sustainability transitions. Its most recent research agenda identifies ‘geography’ as one out of nine major themes, and points out three specifically urban research topics: ‘urban experimentation’, ‘smart cities’ and ‘urban infrastructure obduracy’. However, there is scope for considering a much broader range of issues, given the salience of urbanisation as a cross-cutting sustainability challenge, the diversity of urban sustainability transformations and transformations across the globe (e.g. Global South and Global North), and the fragmented, unruly and unequal nature of urban change that raises intersecting questions of recognition, representation, legitimacy and justice.

Moreover, there is a rich body of diverse conceptual and empirical contributions about far-reaching transitions and/or transformations in relation to urban sustainability, such as: urban and regional studies, urban ecology, urban governance, urban design, planning, architecture and landscape architecture, urban sociology, political ecology, urban metabolism, urban mobility, to name but a few. We want to foster dialogue across disciplines and research communities to recognize and integrate a plurality of knowledge. Inter- and transdisciplinary research approaches should help to develop new knowledge for understanding and shaping broader societal sustainability transitions and transformations.

We hope to create a space that enables the transitions community to benefit from theoretical debates regarding the intersection between the ‘urban’ and ‘systemic change’, including existing transitions frameworks. There is considerable conceptual fragmentation and contradiction in the current literature, with a burgeoning volume of empirical material but less aggregation, cross-case comparison or theoretical development. The Urban Transitions and Transformations thematic group will advance inter- and transdisciplinary engagements and reflection through both scientific activities, e.g. at IST conferences, and co-creative dialogue formats to raise the profile of and foster engagement with transitions research among urban researchers and societal stakeholders more generally.

We facilitate exchange and networking within a broad inter- and transdisciplinary community, supporting continuous debate and the development of a shared research agenda.

We welcome anyone interested in contributing to the group. If you are interested in collaborating with the UTT group, please get in touch with Markus Egermann, Franziska Ehnert, Chiara Fratini and Alexandra Polido. To join the UTT mailing list, please email urban-transitions-strn+subscribe(at)groups.io (administrators: Markus Egermann and Franziska Ehnert).

Activities of the UTT group:

• Personal exchange formats: annual STRN conference sessions, other conference sessions, workshops, seminars
• Online exchange formats: webinars, social media
• Joint publishing: papers, special issues, edited volumes
• Contributions from and updates about the thematic group in the STRN newsletter