Merritt Polk

• PhD
• Head of Department at University of Gothenburg

Organising ‘boundary spaces’ has become a practice for tackling wicked issues in societal planning. Such spaces bring together diverse actors to intentionally staged problem formulation and management processes. However, despite clear goals, boundary spaces face challenges. Moreover, the processes often generate dilemmas and paradoxes that particip...

This paper draws on the intersection of the themes of co-production, knowledge use, and planning that are relevant for urban transformation debate. In theory, co-production is seen to have the potential to facilitate conflict resolution, and thereby contribute to inclusive governance and transformative change. However, critical voices argue that th...

Methods and tools for co-creation of urban station communities

How can we create new practices for research collaboration that mirror the complexities we are facing around the world, including the impacts of climate change, widening inequalities, decreasing biodiversity and untenable consumption levels? Transdisciplinary co-production aims to address this issue, by focusing on real-world problems through colla...

How can we create new practices for research collaboration that mirror the complexities we are facing around the world, including the impacts of climate change, widening inequalities, decreasing biodiversity and untenable consumption levels? Transdisciplinary co-production aims to address this issue, by focusing on real-world problems through colla...

Abstract As widely attested in the literature, the evaluation of co-production is complex and unsuited to the use of conventional quality, monitoring and evaluation indicators. This reflects the uncertainties, co-contributory factors and time lags involved, particularly when seeking to assess institutional and wider societal effects of multi-stakeh...

Expertise in research integration and implementation is an essential but often overlooked component of tackling complex societal and environmental problems. We focus on expertise relevant to any complex problem, especially contributory expertise, divided into ‘knowing-that’ and ‘knowing-how.’ We also deal with interactional expertise and the fact t...

Conflicts over land use and their resolution are one of the core challenges in reaching sustainable development today. The aim of this paper is to better understand the mechanisms that underlie conflict resolution. To do so we focus on the use and integration of different knowledge types for conflict resolution in three fields: natural resource man...

Transdisciplinary and co-production research strives for collaboratively based knowledge processes in which academic researchers come together with other actors to share and create knowledge that can be used to address the sustainability challenges of today, while increasing capacity for societal problem-solving in future. A key issue is to form a...

The recent explosion of journal articles, books and conferences bears witness to the increasing popularity of transdisciplinarity (TD) approaches within participatory approaches to making science more accountable to the challenges of sustainability. This popularity rests upon the assumption that 'wicked' problems require new types of knowledge prod...

As widely attested in the literature, evaluation of co-production is complex and unsuited to use of conventional quality, monitoring and evaluation indicators. This reflects the uncertainties, co-contributory factors and time lags involved, particularly when seeking to assess institutional and wider societal effects of multi-stakeholder deliberativ...

Assessing the value of transdisciplinary research is a complex and multifaceted enterprise allowing room for many perspectives. TheBelcher et al. (2018)critique of our paper (Hansson and Polk 2018) seems to be based on different perspectives and different readings of prior work. These differences for us explains the majority of the criticisms raise...

There is a call for more transdisciplinary (TD) research, from academia, society, and funding agencies. Consequently, the field of TD research is searching for ways of proving the value and providing evidence to support the effectiveness of such research. The main challenge for evaluating TD research is attribution, that is how to link societal cha...

Urban sustainability is a wicked issue unsuited to management through traditional decision-making structures. Co-productive arrangements, spaces and processes are inscribed in new organisational forms to bridge between diverse forms of knowledge and expertise. This paper suggests that local interaction platforms (LIPs) are innovative responses to t...

Transdisciplinary (TD) research is an example of a participatory research approach that has been developed to address the complexity of societal problems through the exchange of knowledge and expertise across diverse groups of societal actors. The concept of knowledge exchange is central to the ability of TD research to produce usable knowledge. Th...

At the current time, many issues and problems within sustainable urban development are managed within traditional disciplinary and organizational structures. However, problems such as, climate change, resource constraints, poverty and social tensions all exceed current compartmentalization of policy-making, administration and knowledge production....

Climate change is a phenomenon that affects different facets of human livelihood. However, the general public does not easily comprehend it. This study was inspired by the realization that climate change is not just an ecological entity but that social processes have a crucial role to play in responding to the climate change crisis. Community perce...

Transdisciplinary research is often promoted as a mode of knowledge production that is effective in addressing and solving current sustainability challenges. This effectiveness stems from its closeness to practice-based/situated expertise and real-life problem contexts. This article presents and tests one approach within transdisciplinary research,...

Transdisciplinarity is often presented as a way to effectively use scientific research to contribute to societal problem solving for sustainability. The aim of this paper is to critically explore this statement. This is done in two ways. First, a literature survey of transdisciplinary research is used to identify the assumptions that underlie the p...

A survey of a random sample of 1,330 Swedish residents assessed the relationships between affect associated with performance of routine out-of-home activities, mood, and judgments of life satisfaction (cognitive subjective wellbeing, CSWB). Regression analyses showed that sociodemographic variables accounted for most variance in CSWB (7%) and least...

Previous research demonstrates an impact on subjective well-being (SWB) of affect associated with routine performance of out-of-home activities. A primary aim of the present study is to investigate whether satisfaction with daily travel has a positive impact on SWB, either directly or indirectly through facilitating the performance of out-of-home a...

This study addresses whether interdisciplinarity is a prominent feature of climate research by means of a co-citation analysis of the IPCC Third Assessment Report. The debate on interdisciplinarity and bibliometric measures is reviewed to operationalize the contested notion of interdisciplinarity. The results, based on 6417 references of the 96 mos...

Local and regional governments are facing extreme challenges regarding their ability to plan for sustainable urban development. The ever-present pro-market policy agenda leaves little room regarding global considerations for long-term environmental conservation and social justice. The complexity of sustainable development also defies the traditiona...

a b s t r a c t An empirical study investigates the extent to which affective–symbolic and instrumental–independence psychological motives mediate effects of socio-demographic variables on daily car use in Sweden. Ques-tionnaire data from a mail survey to 1134 car users collected in 2007 were used to assess the relation-ships daily car use as drive...

Previous research demonstrates an impact on subjective well-being (SWB) of affect associated with routine performance of out-of-home activities. A primary aim of the present study is to investigate whether satisfaction with daily travel has a positive impact on SWB, either directly or indirectly through facilitating the performance of out-of-home a...

a b s t r a c t An empirical study investigates the extent to which affective–symbolic and instrumental–independence psychological motives mediate effects of socio-demographic variables on daily car use in Sweden. Ques-tionnaire data from a mail survey to 1134 car users collected in 2007 were used to assess the relation-ships daily car use as drive...

This paper analyses the ways in which top administrators and planners have framed sustainable development in western Sweden and explores the impact of this framing on formal planning processes and decision making at a regional level. Three main conceptualizations of sustainable development are identified, which are here termed the “pro-market”, the...

This study demonstrates that IPCC Third Assessment Report is strongly dominated by Natural sciences, especially the Earth sciences. The Social sciences are dominated by Economics. The IPCC assessment also results in the separation of the Earth, Biological and Social sciences. The integration that occurs is mainly between closely related scientific...

Given the complexity of current social structures and environmental problems, attaining a truly sustainable society seems rather improbable today. Not only has society not been planned for the complexity of the preconditions and effects that sustainability entails, sustainability is also unlikely given current individual consumption patterns, preva...

The way in which problems relating to sustainable mobility are constructed through discourse and the resultant impact on policy and practice is fundamental to how sustainable transportation systems will be reached in Sweden, as well as the world. Given that sustainable transportation is a political and societal goal, its construction in situ is an...

This paper tests the influence of gender on daily car use and on willingness to reduce car use. Car use is modeled in terms of practical factors combined with manifestations of the specific influence of gender. Willingness to reduce car use is modeled in terms of attitudinal factors using a theory of environmentalism. The results confirm the existe...

Hvorfor har integrationen af køn i svensk transportpolitik fulgt en konservativ kurs og ikke en mere progressiv vej? Det skyldes blandt andet en uafklaret forståelse af køn som analytisk kategori.

The attainment of a sustainable transportation system necessitates changes in the travel behavior of individuals. In this article, a descriptive presentation of travel survey data as well as attitude surveys tests the hypothesis that women are potentially more adaptable to a sustainable transportation system than men are. This is accomplished in fo...

The main challenge facing transport and city planners today are how to promote growth that does not contribute to climate change and other environmental, social and health problems. To be successful, both private and public goals and needs as well as multiple spatial and temporal scales must be explicitly incorporated into planning and policy proce...

The Transport Research Arena (TRA) held their first conference in Göteborg Sweden in June of 2006 with the theme of: Greener, Safer, and Smarter Road Transport for Europe. The overall aim of the conference was to develop a viable platform for European transport research in relation to the European Research Arena (ERA) and the Seventh Framework Prog...