The acceleration of urban sustainability transitions: a comparison of Brighton, Budapest, Dresden, Genk, and Stockholm

City-regions as sites of sustainability transitions have remained under-explored so far. With our comparative analysis of five diverse European city-regions, we offer new insights on contemporary sustainability transitions at the urban level. In a similar vein, the pre-development and the take-off phase of sustainability transitions have been studied in depth while the acceleration phase remains a research gap. We address this research gap by exploring how transitions can move beyond the seeding of alternative experiments and the activation of civil society initiatives. This raises the question of what commonalities and differences can be found between urban sustainability transitions. In our explorative study, we employ a newly developed framework of the acceleration mechanisms of sustainability transitions. We offer new insights on the multi-phase model of sustainability transitions. Our findings illustrate that there are no clear demarcations between the phases of transitions. From the perspective of city-regions, we rather found dynamics of acceleration, deceleration, and stagnation to unfold in parallel. We observed several transitions—transitions towards both sustainability and un-sustainability—to co-evolve. This suggests that the politics of persistence—the inertia and path dependencies of un-sustainability—should be considered in the study of urban sustainability transition

Conceptualizing multidimensional barriers: a framework for assessing constraints in realizing recreational benefits of urban green spaces

This article was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.Although potential urban green space accessibility is being discussed widely, specific barriers that affect accessibility are often under-estimated. They do not equate to limited or uneven accessibility nor are they exclusively related to physical settings. Rather, the range of barriers and their complex interactions, including people’s perceptions, personal conditions, and institutional frameworks, make this topic less clear cut and difficult to put into practice for planning purposes. Given the importance of barriers when people make decisions, we present a conceptual framework to capture the cumulative and interactive effects of different barriers on realizing recreational benefits of urban green spaces. The framework classifies physical, personal, and institutional barriers and highlights their interactions based on three case studies: Stockholm, Leipzig, and Lodz. We argue that constraints to the accessibility of urban green spaces are not so much the interactions between various physical, personal, and institutional barriers, but more the significance that beneficiaries assign to them as perceived barrier effects. Studying barriers seeks to improve the knowledge about the non-use of urban green spaces and to enable us to draw conclusions about the actual accessibility of recreational benefits. Deduced from the conceptual framework, three pathways are contrasted for improving accessibility to the recreational benefits of urban green spaces: the environment, knowledge, and engagement. We argue that these pathways should not be a diffuse objective, but a sensitive and scale-dependent re-balance of individual, physical, and institutional factors for considering justice in environmental and green space planning and management. Our systematic conceptualization and classification of multidimensional barriers enables a more comprehensive understanding of individuals’ decisions in terms of accessing recreational benefits.Peer Reviewe

Anticipatory governance for social-ecological resilience

Anticipation is increasingly central to urgent contemporary debates, from climate change to the global economic crisis. Anticipatory practices are coming to the forefront of political, organizational, and citizens’ society. Research into anticipation, however, has not kept pace with public demand for insights into anticipatory practices, their risks and uses. Where research exists, it is deeply fragmented. This paper seeks to identify how anticipation is defined and understood in the literature and to explore the role of anticipatory practice to address individual, social, and global challenges. We use a resilience lens to examine these questions. We illustrate how varying forms of anticipatory governance are enhanced by multi-scale regional networks and technologies and by the agency of individuals, drawing from an empirical case study on regional water governance of Malaren, Sweden. Finally, we discuss how an anticipatory approach can inform adaptive institutions, decision making, strategy formation, and societal resilience

Balancing diversity and connectivity in multi-level governance settings for urban transformative capacity

Transformation towards sustainable developmentis about findings new ways of thinking, organising and doingto navigate wicked challenges such as climate change andurbanisation. Such challenges call for new governancemodes that match the complexity of the systems to behandled, where multi-level governance and collaborativeapproaches have been suggested to contribute to suchtransformative capacity building. This in-depth, transdisciplinarystudy investigates how the multi-levelgovernance context in Stockholm, Sweden, influences thetransformative capacity from the perspective of localsustainability initiatives. It was found that even though thedecentralized governance of the Stockholm region hosts agreat potential in supporting city wide transformation, it ishampered by disconnect between actors, levels and sectorsand the short-term funding structure. The suggestedinterventions highlight the tension between enablingcollaborations, while safeguarding a high local diversity ofinitiatives and flexibility to ensure sustained space forinnovation and learning.QC 20190218</p

A feeling of free movement : Fitting adjustments for a baseball jacket

Då konstruktion och passform är det mest väsentliga i ett plagg är det oftast här problem uppstår. I detta fall gäller det rörelsen på en baseballjacka. Företaget har tagit ur baseballjackan ur kollektionen för att de inte få ordning på felen.Utgångspunkten för arbetet är ett tidigare prov, olika plaggskisser och en måttlista som inte stämmer helt och hållet. Måttlistan går att använda som jämförelse men i och med att plagget är fel är den inte att lita på. Med en bra grund undviks eventuella problem senare i processen.För att testa rörelsemöjligheterna i plagget används provmodeller i storlek 50. Tre olika personer har används för att kunna se hur jackan passar på olika kroppstyper.Måttlistorna genomsyrar hela arbetsprocessen och ligger till grund för att få till passformen. För att inte ändra plaggets utseende helt spelar måtten en stor roll för att balansera upp ändringarna.Program: Designteknikerutbildninge

Urban shades of green : Current patterns and future prospects of nature conservation in urban landscapes

Urban nature provides local ecosystem services such as absorption of air pollutants, reduction of noise, and provision of places for recreation, and is therefore crucial to urban sustainable development. Nature conservation in cities is also part of the global effort to halt biodiversity decline. Urban landscapes, however, display     distinguishing social and ecological characteristics and therefore the implementation of nature conservation frameworks into cities, requires reconsideration of what nature to preserve, for whom and where. The aim of this thesis was to examine the current urban nature conservation with special focus on formally protected areas, and discuss their future role in the urban landscape. A social-ecological systems approach was used as framework and both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied. The studies were performed at local to regional scales in the southern part of Sweden. Four key questions were addressed: i) What are the characteristics of nature conservation in urban landscapes? ii) How does establishment of nature conservation areas affect the surrounding urban landscape? iii) In what ways are spatial and temporal scales recognized in practical management of nature conservation areas? and iv) How can the dichotomy of built up and nature conservation areas be overcome in urban planning? Nature reserves in urban, compared to rural landscapes were in general fewer, but larger and included a higher diversity of land covers. They were also based on a higher number and different kinds of objectives than rural nature reserves. Urbanisation adjacent to nature reserves followed the general urbanisation patterns in the cities and no additional increase in urban settlements could be detected. In general, there was a lack of social and ecological linkages between the nature conservation areas and the urban landscape and practical management showed a limited recognition of cross-scale interactions and meso-scales. Such conceptual and physical isolation risks decreasing the public support for nature conservation, cause biodiversity decline, and hence impact the generation of ecosystem services. A major future challenge is therefore to transform current conservation strategies to become a tool where urban nature is perceived, planned and managed as valuable and integrated parts of the city. To enable social-ecological synergies, future urban planning should address proactive approaches together with key components like active enhancement of multifunctional landscapes, cross-scale strategies and border zone management.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Submitted. Paper 5: Manuscript

Social IT support kontra traditionell IT support : Användarens syn på att söka IT support via sociala medier

Sociala medier och IT support, två områden som det ofta pratas om. Allt fler företag väljer att kombinera dessa två och låta sina kunder kontakta dem då de behöver IT support via sociala medier, detta fenomen kallas ’Social IT support’. Många människor, använder dagligen sociala medier dock är det oklart vad användare anser om att söka IT support via sociala medier. Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka hur användaren ser på att söka IT support via sociala medier samt vid vilket tillfälle de hellre skulle använda sig av traditionell IT support så som telefon och e-post samt om användaren förräntar sig snabbare respons från företaget då de söker IT support via sociala medier. Undersökningarna som genomförts har syftat till att undersöka och granska vad verkliga individer tycker och tänker kring ämnet. Undersökningarna som genomfört har bestått av en strukturerad kvantitativ enkät med 102 respondenter samt en semi strukturerad kvalitativ intervju som har genomförts på fem individer. Resultatet som framkommit av undersökningen visar att majoriteten av respondenterna är positivt inställda till att prova på att söka IT support via sociala medier. Undersökningen visar också att det är de olika problemen som uppstår som påverkar om de väljer att söka IT support via sociala medier eller på det traditionella sättet. Resultatet visar även att de flesta respondenter förväntar sig snabbare kontakt från företaget då de sökt IT support via sociala medier än över telefon. Vilket är känt från tidigare forskning dock har skillnader från tidigare forskningar påträffats. Undersökningen visar även att män har högre förväntningar än kvinnor på hur lång tid det ska ta för ett företag att kontakta dem

Fildelare-en social bandit i vår tid

We examined why file sharing is such a widespread phenomenon and what drives the persons that using file sharing, and what consequences it has on their consuming and ownership. We reached our goal by interviewing ten people who download files, using a qualitative method. We present the internet community where sharing files, copyright and the IPRED law are important ingredients for how the new generation consumer’s patterns look like. Today you can travel all over the world with a push on a button in just a few seconds. Our result shows that the values have changed when it comes to consumption. The ethic when it comes to production has been replaced by an aesthetic of consumption where culture is for free and easily accessible. In addition to the shift in our sense of our role in society has also been rapid technological developments led to the emergence of a gap between the technology available and the laws, policies and ethical standards prevailing in our society.A free culture prevail, in good or bad, where sharing files is a debated fact which the government today are trying to find a solution for