Can cities shape socio-technical transitions and how would we know if they were?

• Published in: Cities and Low Carbon Transitions pp. 70 - 86
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2011
• Subjects: Social Interests; Systemic Socio-technical Transitions; Urban Scale; MLP; Dense; Urban Governance Networks; National Transitions; Intermediary Organisations; Face To Face; Landscape Pressures; Urban Responses; Essential Infrastructures; IEA; Clinton Climate Initiative; Regime Transformation; Green Infrastructure; Socio-technical Configuration; Socio-technical Transitions; Urban Transitions; Socio-technical Infrastructure Systems; Socio-technical Systems; Territorial Priorities; Energy Conservation; Socio-technical Regimes; Socio-technical Organisation
• ISBN: 0415586976; 9780415586979
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203839249-12

Cities have been transformed over the past two decades in ways that have been characterised as their ‘re-emergence’, ‘renaissance’ and ‘entrepreneurialism’ (see Brenner 2004; Harvey 1989; Jessop 1997). Essential infrastructures of energy, water, waste and transport have been fundamental in supporting this ‘reemergence’. Yet until recently, the provision and organisation of these critical infrastructures were largely perceived unproblematically, and taken for granted as primarily engineering challenges and administrative issues (Graham and Marvin 2001). More recently, however, a series of economic, ecological, population and institutional constraints have produced new challenges and pressures on urban growth and the management of cities’ essential infrastructures. Furthermore, the push for ‘competitiveness’ and place-based competition is occurring while established energy, water, waste and food resources that underpin economic growth are increasingly constrained and the basis of recontinued geopolitical struggle and subject to securitisation (Dalby 2007). Questions about the security of ecological resources and the implications of climate change have become increasingly internalised and intertwined with national states’ priorities and responsibilities for social welfare and economic competitiveness. These are also increasingly becoming issues at an urban scale (Hodson and Marvin 2009a).