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

Transition Thinking and Business Model Innovation–Towards a Transformative Business Model and New Role for the Reuse Centers of Limburg, Belgium

The current dynamics of change, including climate change, resource depletion, energy transition, internet of things, etc. will have substantial impacts on the functioning of contemporary business models. Most firms and companies, however, still largely focus on efficiency strategies leading to sub-optimal solutions (reducing bad impact), rather than radically changing their business model to develop new transaction models more appropriate for today’s world (doing better things). However, persistent sustainability issues arising from our changing societal systems, require more radical and structural changes both within and between organizations to change the way we do business. There is limited empirically established research literature on how businesses can be more proactive in this regard and how they can move beyond “management of unsustainability”. In this paper, we present a transformative business model innovation approach inspired by transition theory combining elements of systems thinking, value-inspired envisioning, reflexive design and co-creation that was pioneered for a consortia of reuse centers in the province of Limburg, Belgium. We demonstrate that this approach contributed to the development of new business model concepts, was conducive for mobilizing support and resources to ensure follow up activity and holds potential to promote a more proactive role for businesses as agents of transformative change

A comparison of energy transition governance in Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom

\u3cp\u3eThis paper reviews and analyzes the challenges of energy transition governance towards a low-carbon society as a political achievement. The main research question is how specific transition governance approaches (as advocated by transition theory) can be embedded/anchored in the policy-making logics and practices. We analyze three country cases, known for their path-breaking efforts in the area: Germany (due to its pioneering role in the development and diffusion of renewable energy technologies), the Netherlands (due to its pioneering role in launching the transition management framework), and the United Kingdom (due to its pioneering role in adopting a long-term legislative commitment to a low-carbon future). The paper identifies best governance practices and remaining challenges in the following areas: (i) connecting long-term visions with short- and mid-term action; (ii) innovation (technological as well as social); (iii) integration (of multiple objectives and policy areas and levels); (iv) societal engagement; and (v) learning/reflexivity.\u3c/p\u3