Workers as actors at the micro-level of sustainability transitions : A systematic literature review

Work and workers have been neglected topics in sustainability transitions research. Our sys-tematic literature review of 28 academic papers on the subject reveals five ways in which workers are affected or otherwise linked to transitions, indicating the relevance of further empirical studies on the role played by different groups of workers. First, environmental policies and other macro-level changes have indirect consequences for workers. Second, new sustainable work practices emerge or face insurmountable obstacles depending on meso- and micro-level change dynamics. Third, workers may adopt mediating positions and act as intermediaries in transitions. Fourth, novel educational programmes evolve to equip workers with new skills, and fifth, tran-sitions may lead to the creation of new jobs in the labour market. Co-evolutionary change dy-namics of sustainability transitions affect workers in both formal and informal forms of employment, and these questions in accelerating transitions require further attention.Peer reviewe

Together We Can Make It Work! Toward a Design Framework for Inclusive and Participatory City-Making of Playable Cities

Making it work together can be challenging when various stakeholders are involved. Given the context of neighborhoods and cities specifically, stakeholders values and interests are not always aligned. In these settings, to construct long-term and sustaining participatory city-making projects, to make it work together, is demanding. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a design framework for inclusive and participatory city-making. This framework is inspired by the playable city perspective in that it endorses an open, exploratory, and interactive mindset of city actors. An extensive literature review on approaches taken for playful and participatory interventions in local communities provides the foundations for the framework. The review brings forward four pillars on which the framework is grounded and four activities for exploration of the design space for participatory city-making. A case study from The Hague (NL) is used to demonstrate how the framework can be applied to design and analyze processes in which city stakeholders together make it work. The case study analysis complements the framework with various research methods to support researchers, urban planners, and designers to engage with all city stakeholders to create playful and participatory interventions, which are inclusive and meaningful for the local community. The research contributions of this paper are the proposed framework and informed suggestions on how this framework in practice assists city stakeholders to together make it work

Infrastructuring just sutainability transitions: prefiguring missions inside a challenge-driven innovation program from Design and Architechture Norway

Across the local to global scale, governance systems are unprepared to respond to interconnected crises, such as social exclusion and biodiversity collapse. Following, a gap exists between the need for urgent change, and the slow pace of action in sustainability transitions. Addressing this gap demands systemic strategies that are adaptable to institutional contexts and actionable today. Design contributes to these contexts by integrating perspectives and desires, imagining alternatives and stewarding processes for continuous learning and adjustments. During my employment at Design and Architecture Norway, I conducted systemic action research within and around Gnist, a design-led and challenge-driven innovation program for sustainable place development. There have been 16 municipal organizations attending the program between 2020-2022, each with unique challenges. During the course of a year, qualitative data were collected from everyday observations, background material for white papers, workshop outputs, along with 28 interview transcripts from participants in Gnist such as: designers/other professionals in placemaking, government officials, regional authorities, and public agencies. A consistent finding in the literature review and research is the importance of learning loops in transitions, with systematic learning processes lacking at several government levels. This thesis emphasizes enabling mechanisms for bottom-up change. It addresses two research questions: “What are the learnings and future aspirations based on three iterations of Gnist?”, and “How could Design and Architecture Norway infrastructure just sustainability transitions?”. Fortunately, design is an integrative discipline, and my thesis aims to synthesize literature concerned with design and transitions and the research findings into a portfolio of suggestions and strategies. By facilitating the emergence of governance systems that allow experimentation, learning and aligned change initiatives, designing missions appear to be the most promising method of overriding sector logics. Missions are bold, inspirational and targeted commitments towards addressing grand challenges, they are explored worldwide and science-based missions have launched in Norway. Thus, there is a window of opportunity to define and exemplify how missions oriented towards just sustainability transitions could be configured. There are several practical configurations of the Gnist-program that prefigure possible models for developing angles, concepts and prototypes for co-designing local missions. Specifically, the program has the ability to produce place-based design briefs at scale, facilitate emerging design- and placemaking communities of practice, and at times empower public administrations to self-organize co-creative processes

Design-Enabled Participatory City Making

This article aims to unravel the tensions that obstruct participatory city making: the processes in which government, entrepreneurs and citizens co-create new solutions for urban challenges. Participatory city making is explored and conceptualized through an empirical grounded study of local civil servants and citizen initiatives in Rotterdam. Through interviews and a set of three workshops the practices of these city makers are studied. A need for more transparency, influence and exchange was identified. The value of design is explored in general, and specifically the design of possible tools and interventions, to address the identified issues and tensions. This exploration shows that design-enabled interventions could, on the one hand, by `infrastructuring', anticipate on the diffused design activities of individual actors in the urban context, and on the other hand, the use of these tools and interventions could promote participatory approaches among the different city makers towards urban sustainability transitions