Elsevier

Research Policy

Volume 41, Issue 6, July 2012, Pages 968-979
Research Policy

Toward a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2012.02.014Get rights and content

Abstract

In the past decade, the literature on transitions toward sustainable socio-technical systems has made a considerable contribution in understanding the complex and multi-dimensional shifts considered necessary to adapt societies and economies to sustainable modes of production and consumption. However, transition analyses have often neglected where transitions take place, and the spatial configurations and dynamics of the networks within which transitions evolve. A more explicit spatial perspective on sustainability transitions contributes to the extant transitions literature in three ways. Firstly it provides a contextualization on the limited territorial sensitivity of existing literature. Secondly, it explicitly acknowledges and investigates diversity in transition processes, which follows from a ‘natural’ variety in institutional conditions, networks, actor strategies and resources across space. Thirdly, it encompasses not only greater emphasis but also an opportunity to connect to a body of literature geared to understanding the international, trans-local nature of transition dynamics. Concerned with the prevalent lack of attention for the spatial dimensions of sustainability transitions in most studies, this paper seeks to unpick and make explicit sustainability transition geographies from the vantage point of economic geography. The paper argues that there are two interrelated problems requiring attention: the institutional embeddedness of socio-technical development processes within specific territorial spaces, and an explicit multi-scalar conception of socio-technical trajectories. Following these arguments, the paper concludes that transitions research would do well to take a closer look at the geographical unevenness of transition processes from the perspective of global networks and local nodes.

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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