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Call for papers for a special issue on urban transformative capacity: “Habitat International”

by | Sep 19, 2016 | News

Shared by Marc Wolfram on our mailing list.

Urban transformative capacity: Enabling sustainability transitions in and through cities

Background

Humanity is facing unprecedented challenges in terms of urban transformation. Global environmental change, imminent resource depletion, rapid urbanization, migration waves, and the corresponding need to restructure the political economy of nation states are pointing towards a critical role for cities in promoting sustainable development globally. This is increasingly recognized by international policies that emphasize the urgent need for interconnected changes in cities, societal (sub-) systems and ecosystems across spatial scales, while also demanding and supporting the development of capacities for practical implementation (UN, 2015a, 2015b; UN HABITAT, 2016).

Research topic and perspective

The concept of transformative capacity identifies abilities required to create a new system configuration where the existing one has become unsustainable  (Walker et al., 2004). Especially the scholarship of social-ecological system resilience (Olsson et al., 2010; Folke et al., 2010; Wilson et al., 2013), socio-technical system transitions (Hodson and Marvin, 2010; Gottschick, 2013; Rijke et al., 2013; Wittmayer et al., 2014; Rauschmayer et al., 2015) and sustainability science (Wiek et al., 2012; Miller et al., 2014) have developed differentiated systemic understandings of transformative capacity and its characteristics, linking geographical scales, government- and agency levels. While highly pertinent, these understandings are however not always focused on cities and their particularities, nor do they offer orientation for practical operationalization yet.

Whilst other research strands have engaged with (urban) change for sustainability and identified components of (transformative) capacity that are of relevance, these scholarly fields do not necessarily share a systemic ontology. This includes, for example, development studies, urban studies, risk assessment studies, political economics, social innovation studies, as well as organizational and business studies. The current state of knowledge regarding urban transformative capacity suggests that the articulation of, and interactions between, the following key components are to be addressed (Wolfram, 2016):

  • Inclusive and multiform urban governance – diverse governance modes and network forms, broad participation, sustained intermediaries and hybridization;
  • Transformative leadership oriented at sustainability – located in the public, private and civil society sectors;
  • Empowered and autonomous communities of practice – place-based and/or issue-driven, addressing social needs and motives;
  • System(s) knowledge and memory – baseline analysis, awareness of system(s) dynamics and path dependencies;
  • Urban sustainability foresight – transdisciplinary knowledge co-production, collective visions, alternative scenarios and future pathways;
  • Diverse community-based experimentation with disruptive solutions – realized by communities of practice, oriented at collective visions, multi-dimensional;
  • Innovation embedding and coupling – providing access to resources for capacity development, planning and mainstreaming transformative action;
  • Reflexivity and social learning – diverse formats and methods for monitoring, knowledge management and sharing;

Guiding questions

Against this backdrop, this special issue aims to feature new conceptual and empirical insights into the specific capacities required for effectively enabling, initiating, steering and performing systemic urban change for sustainability. Across the submissions, the special issue will illuminate how building such capacities translates into urban (meta-) governance, policy and practice; thus developing an evidence base that can guide collective action at and across all levels. Given the regionally differentiated challenges of urban transformation globally, we are keen to bring together analyses from the global North and South to foster a bi-directional dialogue and learning process. The guiding questions are:

  1. What are constitutive and distinctive components of urban transformative capacity, and how do they interact? – Based on a systemic ontology (e.g. social-ecological systems, socio-technical systems, complex adaptive systems) and relational perspective (multi-level, cross-scale), all contributions need to identify specific requirements for developing urban transformative capacity and their interdependencies – thus clearly distinguishing abilities for systemic transformation from more general discussions of ‘capacity’. This may be focusing on selected components of urban transformative capacity, or targeting a more comprehensive account. It may also discuss commonalities, complementarities and (possibly) incompatibilities between different conceptions of, and approaches to assess or build urban transformative capacity.
  2. How can urban transformative capacity be consistently assessed and compared between world regions, countries and places? – Learning about urban transformative capacity, its articulation, development and impacts requires sound methods that capture the status of the pertinent components and relationships. Part of the contributions should therefore discuss or apply methods for assessment and engage with the corresponding issues of validity, comparability and transferability. Comparative studies will thus be given priority over single case studies.
  3. How can a focus on urban transformative capacity contribute to purposefully shape urban transitions towards sustainability and resilience? – Translating conceptions of urban transformative capacity and related empirical insights into policy and practice in a given context demands practical orientations. Part of the contributions should therefore discuss actions required for developing urban transformative capacity and/or questions of designing urban governance and policy at the different levels concerned.

Submission requirements

Authors are requested to focus on at least one of the above guiding questions. Studies with a focus on selected capacity components are possible, but need to be clearly positioned within an overall conceptual framework for understanding urban transformative capacity.

Extended Abstracts should have a total length of 500 words and clearly indicate a) research question(s), b) research perspective and system ontology, c) methodology and empirical basis (if applicable), and d) results and conclusions.

Extended Abstracts should provide key references (not included in the word count).

Abstract submission via email to: m.wolfram@yonsei.ac.kr

Important dates

  • 01.09.2016 – Call for abstracts published
  • 31.10.2016 – Submission deadline for extended abstracts (500 words)
  • 30.11.2016 – Notification of abstract acceptance / full paper invitation
  • 28.02.2017 – Submission deadline for full papers of 4000 words (6000 as an exception)
  • 31.05.2017 – Last notification of review decisions
  • 15.07.2017 – Submission deadline for revised papers
  • 01.09.2017 – Final acceptance of revised papers
  • 01.11.2017 – Publication of special issue (to be confirmed)

Guest editors

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