Philipp Späth

• apl. Prof. Dr.
• Head of research group at University of Freiburg

This chapter aims to improve our analytical understanding of low carbon transitions at and in between multiple geographical scales, particularly ‘below’ a national level. Taking the Multilevel Perspective (MLP) as our starting point we show that it offers tools for thinking through the institutional and technological conditions and rules through wh...

Regional initiatives pursuing self-sufficiency through the use of renewable energy sources (RESS-initiatives) aim at contributing to broader transitions towards more sustainable energy systems. As such, they have raised high expectations among local activists and are increasingly supported by diverse funding schemes such as national programs. How c...

Which role do spatial dimensions play in the transformation of socio-technical regimes, in particular the energy system, towards more sustainable configurations? Concepts such as the multi-level perspective on socio-technical change have not given sufficient attention to space and place so far. We develop our considerations around the case of an ?E...

'Guiding visions' play an important role in the transition management approach as a central means of mobilizing social actors and the co-ordination of dispersed agency. 'Energy regions' in Austria are an interesting example for the strategic promotion of such guiding visions in the context of regional development. We describe the case of Murau, an...

Energy sector integration is one key strategy in the German net-zero energy transition to decarbonise the energy-consuming sectors mobility, heating and industry. Energy sector integration describes connecting power, heat, mobility and industrial processes as well as their infrastructure through either the use of renewable power (direct electrifica...

The Leipzig Charter highlights the need for integrated, place-based participatory governance approaches to achieve more sustainable and just urban futures. In this article, we provide a synthesis of our transdisciplinary analysis of ten EU projects which were selected from over 100 EU-funded urban sustainability and justice projects. Through analys...

Building on the contributions to the article collection “The Governance of Sustainable Energy Transitions in the Global South “, this editorial offers a sketch for a research agenda on transitions research with a main focus on Africa. Still being ill-defined in its concrete contours, this research agenda engages with the central themes of heterogen...

Im ersten Teil konkretisiert und erweitert dieser Bericht das Konzept einer transformativen Umweltpolitik, welches aufbauend auf den Erkenntnissen der Transformationsforschung Handlungsansätze für die Politik formuliert, für das Ernährungssystem. Die Handlungsansätze werden in Ansätze des Nischenmanagements und der Exnovation systematisiert. Zudem...

Recent academic evidence suggests that, in contrast to what is often thought, the introduction of renewable energy infrastructures often leads to negative, not positive, social equity outcomes. Against this background, this paper aims to develop and empirically illustrate an integrative framework for analysing the work – or ‘agency’ – exercised by...

This paper studies the performativity of smart mobility expectations in envisioning urban futures. Smart mobility, or ICT-enabled transport services, are increasingly considered a necessary ingredient for sustainability transitions in cities. Expectations of smart mobility’s contribution to such a transition are constituted by a strong belief in th...

Hamburg participates in the EU-funded research and development project mySMARTlife (mSL) with experiments involving smart city technologies, among others in the field of transportation infrastructure. These experiments are shaped by a public-private consortium in accordance with a call of the EU research and innovation program “Horizon 2020”. They...

This chapter explores how a Smart City agenda has influenced attitudes towards the future in contemporary mobility planning in Hamburg. By comparing three recent frameworks of transportation planning, we detect an interesting shift that occurred when Hamburg’s administration embarked on the project of becoming a leading Smart City. At that point in...

This article studies local enactments of “smart” in and through visions of six smart district development projects. We show that smart cities’ framings of the future are inevitably diverse, emerging from local assemblages consisting of a wide array of heterogeneous elements that translate global imaginaries of the smart city to meet local specifici...

This article studies local enactments of “smart” in and through visions of six smart district development projects. We show that smart cities’ framings of the future are inevitably diverse, emerging from local assemblages consisting of a wide array of heterogeneous elements that translate global imaginaries of the smart city to meet local specifici...

This study explores the movement for an ›Economy for the Common Good‹ from a sustainability transitions perspective. Special interest lies in the integration of companies in a social movement. The underlying study was carried out in the region of South Tyrol, Italy. It reveals what institutional work was involved, explores impacts and reflects on t...

»Smart City« steht für das Versprechen einer Zukunft mit hoher Lebensqualität für alle - aber auch für eine Zukunft der Überwachung und Kontrolle von öffentlichen und privaten Räumen. Wie verändert der Einsatz digitaler Technologien und Infrastrukturen die aktuelle Raumwahrnehmung, Raumproduktion und Raumnutzung in Städten? 35 Stadtforscher_innen b...

Cities, the world over, are increasingly recognised to be both a principal source of the environmental and social sustainability challenges facing contemporary society and a critical site for addressing these challenges. Socio-technical systems are at the heart of these challenges as they configure central aspects of urban life: from mobility and e...

Over recent decades it has been recognised that urban sustainability challenges are deeply embedded in urban systems such as mobility, water supply and sanitation, and energy. It has likewise been recognised that the governance of such systems is a fundamentally political enterprise as system design shapes both practices and the bio-physical flows...

The objective of this book has been to draw attention to knowledge production as a salient political component of the governance of urban sustainability transitions. Drawing on insights from the chapters presented in this book, we review the main characteristics of this knowledge politics perspective and the contribution our collective work makes t...

The young Republic of Kosovo sits atop the fifth largest geological lignite reserve on the planet. In the face of an unreliable electricity supply, the Government has promoted the New Kosovo Power Plant as a key project for energy security and national economic development. Efforts to add new coal-based generation capacities have sparked a debate o...

This report forms part of a series also covering China, France, the Netherlands, and the UK, and draws on findings from a three-year (2015-2018), partly DFG-funded research project titled "Smart Eco-cities for a Green economy: A Comparative Study of Europe and China."

Currently little is known about how institutional arrangements co-evolve with urban experimentation. This paper mobilizes neo-institutional literature and recent urban experimentation literature as a framework to explore how and why institutional arrangements differ across urban contexts. Empirically the paper focusses on smart city initiatives in...

The policy pointers presented in this report are the result of a three-year (2015-18) research project led by Federico Caprotti at the University of Exeter. The project, Smart Eco-Cities for a Green Economy: A Comparative Analysis of Europe and China, was delivered by a research consortium comprising scholars and researchers in the UK, China, the N...

Over the past few decades, increasing attention given to the issue of urban sustainability has been reflected in the spread of ‘eco-city’ policies and initiatives. However, the past few years have seen the growing use of a new terminology, around the idea of the ‘smart city’. This new agenda has incorporated many pre-existing themes of urban develo...

Following the burgeoning of Eco-City planning and programs, the term ‘Smart City’ has quickly taken root across the world as a new discourse for urban development. We find frequent reference to both terms and the related ambitions in many Chinese cities today. How do the visions related to these two terms interplay in these cities? How substantial...

The ambition to develop a bioeconomy depends largely on the availability of biomass from forests. To tap into this resource, technological innovations are sought in the field of lignocellulosic biorefining. Although biorefinery concepts have been under development for decades now in Germany, many relevant technological developments are still confin...

This chapter aims to improve our analytical understanding of low carbon transitions at and in between multiple geographical scales, particularly ‘below’ a national level. Taking the Multilevel Perspective (MLP) as our starting point we show that it offers tools for thinking through the institutional and technological conditions and rules through wh...

The system of mobility currently faces severe challenges. Particularly in cities, strategic interventions are made to support a transition towards sustainable mobility. Incumbent actors from the car industry are often invited to play a key role in such initiatives. The Stuttgart region is supported with public money to become a model region of sust...

In many cities of the world, road space is increasingly contested. Growing vehicle numbers, traffic calming and the development of new infrastructure for more sustainable transport modes such as bicycles have all contributed to pressure on available space and conflicts over the allocation of space. This paper provides the first assessment of urban...

In konsequent inter- und transdisziplinärer Perspektive untersuchen wir, inwiefern sich RRI aus bestimmten Konzepten und den dahinterliegenden Forschungslinien speist, speisen könnte und speisen sollte.

This chapter provides an overview of the authors′ findings concerning two questions: 1) To what extent can a socio-technical system be detached from the constraining factors of the general energy regime? and 2) Can such local deviations have an effect on the global regime as a whole? The chapter first reviews the literature on about socio-technical...

One strand of empirical research and conceptual rethinking of the MLP centers on the role of cities and regions as places mediating such transitions and the importance of the local level. Studying niche-regime-landscape dynamics in a scale sensitive way (as opposed to just looking at processes of structuration and events over time) helped to uneart...

The cities of Graz in Austria and Freiburg in Germany have been perceived as ecological model cities since the late 1980s.This is shown by various international awards, press coverage and many visitors from other municipal administrations. Both cities have been well known for their attempts to bring about transitions towards more sustainable and lo...

Innovation policies in the European Union increasingly address so-called 'grand challenges' such as climate change, resource depletion or aging societies. Such transformations go far beyond conventional product or process innovations and require a restructuring of broad socio-technical regimes, e.g. the built environment, systems of mobility, the e...

1. Analyse bestehender Energieszenarien und sozio-ökonomischer Trends und Treiber; Entwicklung von drei Rahmenszenarien zur Beschreibung möglicher zukünftiger Entwicklungen unter unterschiedlichen sozio-ökonomischen Rahmenbedingungen. 2. Ausarbeitung von in sich konsistenten und plausiblen sozio-technischen Zukunftsbildern innerhalb dieser Rahmenbe...

This paper reports on the ongoing project E-Trans 2050 that develops socio-technical scenarios for a sustainable energy future in Austria. The project aims at an interactive engagement with socio-technical scenarios of potential energy futures and intends to support strategy development at the level of politics, research and firms, representatives...

Transdisciplinary research, especially sustainability research, is by definition influenced by diverse stakeholders with diverging interests, objectives, and preconceptions. This makes an evaluation of such projects difficult as there is not one worldview, theory, or methodological canon against which they could be evaluated. This led to much metho...

Today, 'district heating systems' (DHS) in many cases are the most energy efficient option to provide space heating in densely populated urban areas. Such grid based systems in- volve heavy investments though, which in the form of 'sunk costs' create a 'technological lock-in situation', often accom- panied by 'institutional lock-in'. After the deci...