Speaker
Description
The challenge of rapidly accelerating low-carbon transitions in cities—while ensuring that these transformations do not exacerbate urban inequalities—lies at the heart of the urban just transitions debate in both academia and policy. Climate action must be integrated with equity and justice to ensure that the needs and concerns of underserved communities are central to the transition (Romero-Lankao et al., 2023). According to Hughes and Hoffmann (2019), co-producing knowledge with urban communities and networks within a community-engaged research framework can play a pivotal role in developing concrete indicators and strategies for recognizing, measuring, and achieving just urban transitions. In other words, the transition toward a net-zero city can be more democratic and "just" if the process of defining the concept of transition itself is open to discussion, fostering co-decision-making and opportunities for mutual learning (Privitera, 2025).
While significant progress has been made in theorizing urban just transitions and action-oriented and actionable transdisciplinary knowledge (Robinson, 2008; Klenk et al., 2017; Mach et al., 2020), less attention has been paid to the link between these areas and to how academia can bridge the two.
This paper examines how action-oriented, transdisciplinary co-production theories and practices can inform the discussion on urban just transitions. I will provide a comprehensive literature review of academic publications on knowledge co-production processes that, while aiming for sustainable transitions, also seek to address justice and equity issues.
The guiding research questions of this literature review are:
What theoretical frameworks and subsequent theorizations address the practical outcomes and actions generated by action-oriented, transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge?
What practices and experiences in this field can inform future approaches?
What tools, methods, and features have researchers, especially in planning and urban studies, employed in applying action-oriented, transdisciplinary co-production?
How have these theorizations and concrete experiences of co-production expanded the discourse around facilitated urban just transitions, and how have they contributed to actualizing such transitions?
After reviewing hundreds of papers, 100 relevant studies from the fields of social, environmental, and spatial sciences have been selected for an in-depth examination. These have been categorized into three sub-groups: post-positivistic epistemologies, knowledge co-production theories, and knowledge co-production experiences. The review particularly focuses on how justice and equity are addressed, the interest in new narratives and visions, and the theorized and applied approaches and methods. Finally, the literature review will emphasize the role of academia in promoting action-oriented, transdisciplinary co-production as a means of addressing justice and equity issues and facilitating urban just transitions. In light of this analysis, I will offer suggestions for how urban scholars, planners, and practitioners could orient their theoretical and practical work on urban futures toward more justice-driven and engaged endeavors.
References
Hughes, S. & Hoffmann, M., 2020. Just urban transitions: Toward a research agenda. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 11(3), e640. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.640
Klenk, N., Fiume, A., Meehan, K. & Gibbes, C., 2017. Local knowledge in climate adaptation research: Moving knowledge frameworks from extraction to co-production. WIREs Climate Change, 8(5), e475. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.475
Mach, K.J., Lemos, M.C., Meadow, A.M., Wyborn, C., Klenk, N., Arnott, J.C., Ardoin, N.M., Fieseler, C., Moss, R.H., Nichols, L., Stults, M., Vaughan, C. & Wong-Parodi, G., 2020. Actionable knowledge and the art of engagement. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 42, pp.30–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2020.01.002
Privitera, E., in press. Mapping toxic legacies to map alternative futures: Community-based experiences toward just transitions in an industrial risk landscape. In A. Mehan, ed. After oil: A comparative analysis of oil heritage, urban transformations, and resilience paradigms. Springer Nature.
Robinson, J., 2008. Being undisciplined: Transgressions and intersections in academia and beyond. Futures, 40(1), pp.70–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2007.06.007
Romero-Lankao, P., Rosner, N., Brandtner, C. et al., 2023. A framework to centre justice in energy transition innovations. Nature Energy, 8(11), pp.1192–1198. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01351-3
| Keywords | just transitions; equity; transdisciplinary knowledge co-production; community-engaged research; literature review. |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
