Katharina Hölscher

Ghent: Fostering a Climate for Transition

In 2011, the city administration of Ghent started up the ‘climate arena’ based on transition management (TM) to develop a plan and implement actions to work towards its ambition of climate neutrality by 2050 and to involve actors from the city in doing so. This chapter analyses the empowerment of the involved actors to discern long-term commitment to a transition to climate neutrality and draw lessons for TM. TM is found to yield initial ‘seeds of change’ by creating new contacts and synergies, broadening problem perceptions, and contributing to intrinsic motivation to pursue the transition towards climate neutrality. There is a need to differentiate between the arena participants and involved policy officers: TM appears as effective tool to open up policy officers for more open and co-creative approaches as well as cross-departmental collaboration by broadened problem foci. Challenges regarding the longevity of empowerment effects on the arena participants point to lessons for TM, including the creation of space in the city administration before the process and facilitation ‘beyond the arena’.

Steering transformations under climate change : Capacities for transformative climate governance and the case of Rotterdam, the Netherlands

In light of the persistent failure to reduce emissions decisively, facilitate long-term resilience against climate change and account for the connectedness of climate change with other social, environmental and economic concerns, we present a conceptual framework of capacities for transformative climate governance. Transformative climate governance enables climate mitigation and adaptation while purposefully steering societies towards low-carbon, resilient and sustainable objectives. The framework provides a systematic analytical tool for understanding and supporting the already ongoing changes of the climate governance landscape towards more experimental approaches that include multi-scale, cross-sectoral and public-private collaborations. It distinguishes between different types of capacities needed to address transformation dynamics, including responding to disturbances (stewarding capacity), phasing-out drivers of path dependency (unlocking capacity), creating and embedding novelties (transformative capacity) and coordinating multi-actor processes (orchestrating capacity). Our case study of climate governance in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, demonstrates how the framework helps to map the activities by which multiple actors create new types of conditions for transformative climate governance, assess the effectiveness of the capacities and identify capacity gaps. Transformative and orchestrating capacities in Rotterdam emerged through the creation of space and informal networks for strategic and operational innovation, which also propelled new types of governance arrangements and structures. Both capacities support stewarding and unlocking by integrating and mainstreaming different goals, connecting actors to each other for the development of solutions and mediating interests. Key challenges across capacities remain because of limited mainstreaming of long-term and integrated thinking into institutional and regulatory frameworks. As the ongoing changes in climate governance open up multiple questions about actor roles, effective governance processes, legitimacy and how effective climate governance in the context of transformations can be supported, we invite future research to apply the capacities framework to explore these questions.

A German Experience: The Challenges of Mediating ‘Ideal-Type’ Transition Management in Ludwigsburg

When the city of Ludwigsburg in Germany experimented with the transition management approach, it had already formulated ambitious sustainability strategies and programmes, institutionalised sustainability in a cross-sectional city department and established a variety of participatory processes to collect citizen input for strategic planning. In this chapter, we reflect on the transition management process in Ludwigsburg and its results against the backdrop of how ‘ideal-type’ transition management got mediated in a context with well-developed sustainability strategies and participatory planning processes. The case of transition management in Ludwigsburg reveals several issues that relate to a questioning of the distinctiveness of transition management as co-creation process, its ‘added value’ and its fit with existing policies and planning processes. The process outcomes might be an indication of challenges in that regard: the results were treated as ‘input’ to the city government’s plans, were not able to inspire ‘transformative’ thinking, did not result in concrete actions and, finally, roles and relationships of the city government vis-a-vis the citizens were largely re-confirmed. Nevertheless, the results do include new ideas about the future of Ludwigsburg, build on a systemic perspective and the experience with the new methodology triggered the involved policy officers to reflect on the city government’s current inflexible and narrow approaches to participation in city planning.

So What? Transition Management as a Transformative Approach to Support Governance Capacities in Cities

This chapter synthesises the insights from the various book contributions to critically reflect on what transition management offers when applied in and for cities. In this book, transition management has been suggested as a transformative governance approach in and for cities. Transition management seeks to provide impulses for systemic change by creating spaces for developing innovative ideas and practices and for empowering actors to develop transition experiments. It also holds the potential to fundamentally challenge existing planning and governance systems by aligning a diversity of actors, networks and initiatives under a shared and long-term sustainability vision and questioning existing roles and responsibilities of actors. We explore how transition management thus contributes to building transformative capacity for systemic change and orchestrating capacity for the coordination of self-organisation. On the basis of the book contributions we discuss the potentials, opportunities and challenges of transition management as a prescriptive and transformative governance approach. We conclude by identifying implications for transition management in light of the objective to strengthen governance capacities for navigating sustainability transitions in cities.

Introducing Sustainability Transitions’ Thinking in Urban Contexts

This chapter describes the basics of transitions thinking, its rationale and relation to sustainability transitions. We outline the fundamental conceptual models and frameworks (multi-phase model, multi-level perspective, multi-path, power and agency) and make a quick introduction to the relation of the sustainability transitions field to environmental governance.

Empowering Actors in Transition Management in and for Cities

The multi-actor nature of urban sustainability transitions challenges existing social fabrics and local governance settings, and raises questions about who takes decisions, with which agenda and to what end. It demands close attention to who are actors involved in transition processes and what are the implications for (changing) roles, responsibilities and relations of actors and networks. This chapter provides an overview of different understandings of actors and roles in transition management in and for cities and how actors are empowered through transition management interventions to advance urban sustainability transitions. We first review different approaches and heuristics to understand actors and roles in transition management and in relation to the underlying goal to influence urban sustainability transitions. These enable to analyse actors and (changing) roles, support the actor selection and enhance reflexivity in transition management processes. We then discuss what the notion of ‘empowerment’ captures in terms of how actors (re-)define, develop and enact roles and relationships in the pursuit of urban sustainability transitions as a result of transition management interventions in cities. We exemplify our reflections with insights from our empirical experiences with transition management processes.

Transition Management in and for Cities: Introducing a New Governance Approach to Address Urban Challenges

For introducing our book, this chapter provides the arguments on why transition management as a governance approach is suitable for cities, as a new strategic planning approach. It also includes a thorough literature review of transition management applications from 2001 to 2017 that shows its spread as a heuristic, operational and theoretical model for transition governance in multiple sectors and across local, regional and national levels. From the literature review and the book contributions we derive ten directions for future research and development of transition management that can benefit not only its operational applications as a process methodology but also its theoretical and heuristic strengths, pointing at theoretical and conceptual deepening and broadening of its tenets and principles. Next, the chapter provides an overview of the book, its four parts and summaries of all chapter contributions. Last, we provide a ‘guide’ on how to read this book, and how to best use the knowledge and experience shared in readers’ research and urban practice.

Transition Management als Meta-Governance-Rahmenwerk zur Gestaltung von Nachhaltigkeitstransitionen. Analyse von Governance-Kapazitäten durch Transition-Management-Interventionen in Gent und Montreuil

Wir untersuchen den Beitrag eines praxisorientierten Governance-Ansatzes – Transition Management – an der Gestaltung von Nachhaltigkeitstransitionen durch die Bildung und Unterstutzung Governance-Kapazitaten. Basierend auf einem theoretischen Rahmenwerk, welches Transformative Kapazitat (die Fahigkeit zur Innovationen von Strukturen, Paradigmen, Prozessen) und Orchestrierungs-Kapazitat (die Fahigkeit zur Sektor- und Governance-Ebenen ubergreifende Koordination von Akteursnetzwerken) umfasst, analysieren wir die Transition Management-Interventionen in Montreuil (Frankreich) und Gent (Belgien). Die Analyse zeigt, dass Transition Management eine geeignete Prozessstruktur bietet um Raum fur neue Impulse sowie deren institutionelle Verankerung und netzwerkubergreifende Koordinierung zu schaffen. Herausforderungen ergeben sich insbesondere durch den hohen Zeit- und Energieaufwand, der nach der relativ engen Prozessstruktur erforderlich ist um die Innovationen umzusetzen und zu verankern sowie die gebildeten Netzwerke aufrechtzuerhalten und zu erweitern.