Toward a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions
Highlights
► Extensive critique of existing transition studies regarding the neglect of space and scale. ► Core elements of a geography of transitions: institutional embeddedness and multiscalarity. ► Future research in transitions should consider contributions from cognate fields such as economic geography.
Section snippets
Introduction: the need for spatial analyses of sustainability transitions
In the past decade, the literature on sustainability transitions has made a considerable contribution toward understanding the complex and multi-dimensional shifts considered necessary to adapt societies and economies to sustainable modes of production and consumption in areas such as transport, energy, housing, agriculture and food, communication and health-care (Geels, 2005a, Geels, 2005b, Hekkert et al., 2007, Jacobsson and Bergek, 2004, Markard et al., 2012, Rohracher, 2001, Smith et al.,
Missing or naïve conceptualizations of space in sustainability transitions
Two conceptual frameworks have been analytically dominant in researching innovation dynamics in sustainability transition processes, namely technological innovation systems (TIS) and the multi-level perspective (MLP) (Markard et al., 2012). Both approaches conceptualize socio-technical systems as semi-coherently interrelated sets of actors, networks institutions and technologies/artifacts. The innovation systems concept as applied to sustainability transitions has been principally concerned
Contextualizing sustainability transitions in space: territorial institutional embeddedness
Both TIS and MLP approaches rely heavily on institutions in their conceptual framework. Institutions are a defining element of a TIS, a system as a whole constituted by “a dynamic network of agents interacting in a specific economic/industrial area under a particular institutional infrastructure and involved in the generation, diffusion, and utilization of technology” (Carlsson and Stankiewicz, 1991, p. 93). This institutional infrastructure remains however largely unspecified, often loosely
Multi-level, multi-scalar sustainability transitions
We argue that there is a risk in transition studies that causalities arise primarily as an artefact of the way that transitions researchers have chosen to tell their stories. By taking ‘time’ as the independent variable, these analyses can make no conceptual claims about the ‘when?’ of transition which in turn reduces the transferability between case studies. Introducing space to these analyses helps contribute to creating better explanations of the timings and sequences of transitions,
Conclusion and discussion: the added value of a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions
In this paper, we have identified two major shortcomings in the implicit treatment of geography in studies of transition processes and dynamics within the technological innovation systems and multi level perspective approaches. Firstly, existing analyses, drawing predominantly on single or comparative case studies, fail to explain if and how spatial contexts matter. Even though there is increasing interest by transition analysts into the role played by differing contexts in shaping the
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of the paper were presented at a seminar at CIND in Uppsala (December 2009), the AAG 2010 in Washington DC (April 2010), at the Regional Studies Association winter conference in London (November 2010), the final DIME conference in Maastricht (April 2011) and the TIS summer school in Gothenburg in August 2011. The authors are grateful for substantive reviews of earlier versions of this paper by Rob Raven, Jochen Markard, Jim Murphy and five anonymous reviewers. They helped to
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