Speaker
Description
Throughout Europe, much of urban development has been guided by a planning culture dependent on the automobile regime and centered on efficiency (Urry, 2004; Mattioli et al., 2020). Car dependent planning has contributed to creating a lock-in; which functions as a barrier to sustainable alternatives (Seto et al., 2016). A more transformative mindset could provide possible pathways to unlock car dependent urban areas. This research aims to find ways to foster transformative capacity to overcome institutional, behavioral and/or infrastructural lock-in.
A promising way for fostering transformative capacity with urban professionals and citizens could be employing the power of (re-)imagination. Re-imagining of what is possible and viable could help opening up to different possible futures as a way out of lock-in (Hajer & Versteeg, 2019). The research distinguishes between (1) the reimagination and cocreation of new futures and (2) the experience of these imaginaries in real life urban experiments. The co-creation and experience of possible futures, by acting them out in the ‘here and now’ through, for instance street experimentation, may challenge the assumptions of the stakeholders on a deeper level (Davoudi, 2023), especially when this is part of a process of learning for transition (Beukers & Bertolini, 2023).
The research focuses on Almere, The Netherlands: a suburban midsized city that faces a car dependent lock-in. Almere is a fast-growing Dutch new town built on the utopian ideals of the garden city in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area with more than 220 000 inhabitants (Chevalier & Tzaninis, 2022). The current lock-in situation in Almere is contradictory, because it has good infrastructure for active (and auto-) mobility, and is, within its neighborhood districts, based on principles of proximity. At the same time, it has a polycentric spread-out urban structure and is designed for mobility efficiency. Many neighborhoods, especially in some of the older districts like Almere Buiten, struggle with decreasing social cohesion, car-dependency, and a dwindling local economy.
The research will analyze interventions based on the city of proximity, that could enhance transformative capacity of urban professionals and neighborhood key actors. It brings these actors together in a learning community, where contesting imaginaries and alternative imaginaries can come up through dialogue and practice, and, crucially, through imagination (Davoudi, 2023). The learning community and interventions are monitored throughout the process and triangulated with interviews and desk research.
The working hypothesis is that through an iterative process of co-creating and experiencing alternative urban imaginaries this may more effectively build transformative capacity for stakeholders to overcome the institutional and behavioral aspects of the lock-in situation towards the creation of more connected communities of proximity.
The proposed presentation for AESOP 2025 is the theoretical framework, research design and preliminary results for the PhD research, which is supervised at the University of Amsterdam and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences.
References
Beukers, E.-(Els) and Bertolini, L.-(Luca) (2023) ‘Fostering learning beyond urban experiment boundaries’, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 46, p. 100684. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.100684.
Chevalier, D. and Tzaninis, Y. (2022) ‘Planning utopia’, in B. Van Klink, M. Soniewicka, and L. Van Den Broeke (eds) Utopian Thinking in Law, Politics, Architecture and Technology. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 208–226. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803921402.00019.
Davoudi, S. (2023) ‘Prefigurative planning: performing concrete utopias in the here and now’, European Planning Studies, 31(11), pp. 2277–2290. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2023.2217853.
Hajer, M. and Versteeg, W. (2019) ‘Imagining the post-fossil city: why is it so difficult to think of new possible worlds?’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 7(2), pp. 122–134. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2018.1510339.
Mattioli, G. et al. (2020) ‘The political economy of car dependence: A systems of provision approach’, Energy Research & Social Science, 66, p. 101486. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101486.
Seto, K.C. et al. (2016) ‘Carbon Lock-In: Types, Causes, and Policy Implications’, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 41(1), pp. 425–452. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-110615-085934.
Urry, J. (2004) ‘The “System” of Automobility’, Theory, Culture & Society, 21(4–5), pp. 25–39. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046059.
| Keywords | Transformative capacity; lock-in; empowerment; city of proximity; prefiguration |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
