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Local Environment
The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cloe20
Transformation through transdisciplinary
practice: cultivating new lines of sight for urban
transformation
Harriet Bulkeley, Emma Lecavalier & Claudia Basta
To cite this article: Harriet Bulkeley, Emma Lecavalier & Claudia Basta (2023) Transformation
through transdisciplinary practice: cultivating new lines of sight for urban transformation, Local
Environment, 28:7, 829-836, DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2023.2218078
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2023.2218078
Published online: 30 May 2023.
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EDITORIAL
Transformation through transdisciplinary practice: cultivating
new lines of sight for urban transformation
ABSTRACT
In this editorial introduction, we introduce the special issue “Transforming
Urban Sustainability”, which seeks to understand the pursuit and practice
of transformative change for urban sustainability. Uniquely, the
contributions to the Special Issue were developed through trans-
disciplinary collaborations and in this editorial we reflect on these
practices and consider how they can catalyze transformative change in
and through academic practice. We also review existing conceptual
approaches to transformation and develop a heuristic device that helps
us to appreciate its multiple and diverse dimensions. Through this
heuristic, we generate lines of sight through which to view
transformation and position the contributions in the Special Issue in
relation to these. We conclude by suggesting that to advance both the
understanding and traction of transformative action we need to
recognise its multiplicity and actively engage with its different facets.
KEYWORDS
Transformation;
transdisciplinary;
sustainability; SDG11
Sustainable Cities and
Communities; SDG13
Climate Action
Introduction
Storms, floods, heatwaves, and choking smog: cities around the world are already living with the
effects of a changing climate and degraded environment. In response, more than 2,300 local and
regional jurisdictions have formally declared climate emergencies (Climate Emergency Declarations
2023). And yet, despite these declarations and nearly three decades of urban initiatives to address
climate change, there remains a persistent concern that urban climate action may at best lack
sufficient urgency and at worst exacerbate existing urban inequalities while falling short of addres-
sing the dire challenges faced. At the same time, reflecting on the scale and severity of the increas-
ingly intertwined climate emergency and global loss of nature, recent reports from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Plat-
form on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) highlight an urgent need for transformative
action (IPCC 2023). As Rosenzweig and Solecki (2018, 756) describe, “the term ‘transformation’is
invoked to describe what cities must do to simultaneously improve climate resiliency and achieve
the positive effects of low-carbon sustainable development”. Yet while momentum behind the dis-
course of transformative change has gathered pace (O’Brien 2018), there remains a lack of coherence
and some confusion as to what transformation might entail and how it can be realised within the
necessary timescales. Indeed, to echo a question posed by Susannah Fischer, “if we have figured
out transformation, why is the world still in such a mess?”(Fisher 2019).
This special issue seeks to understand the pursuit and practice of transformative change for urban
sustainability. The articles are collaboratively written, pairing practitioners working in the global
South (including UN-Habitat, ICLEI-Africa, C40, and the World Resources Institute) with researchers
focused on urban climate and environmental governance. The author teams draw on their range
of knowledge and their diverse experiences to consider the conceptual challenge of defining trans-
formation and the practical challenge of stimulating transformative action in cities. Whilst
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
LOCAL ENVIRONMENT
2023, VOL. 28, NO. 7, 829–836
https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2023.2218078
transdisciplinary research and processes of co-production are increasingly popular across the
research field of urban sustainability, often such efforts are directed to the initial phases of the
design and implementation of research-practice projects. Rarely is analysis, conceptual develop-
ment, and/or the dissemination of such knowledge to academic and policy audiences through
peer reviewed work undertaken. Here we adapt a different approach: rather than working together
to co-produce research projects in a transdisciplinary manner, we have sought to develop a mode of
working in which the outcomes of diverse projects can be bought into conversation with one
another. Our hope is that transdisciplinary writing processes such as these can act as crucial
means through which fuller understandings of transformative change can be developed and
shared across diverse communities.
In addition to cultivating transdisciplinary practices, this special issue also develops an account of
transformative change that appreciates its multiple dimensions and opens space for thinking about
transformation in diverse ways. Noting its inherent complexity and sense of accompanying mystery
(Ziervogel, Cowen, and Ziniades 2016), there can be no one size fits all account of what it will mean
to undertake the kinds of transformative action required. Instead, through setting out the diverse
approaches which are being pursued in the name of transformation and deepening our understand-
ing of what this means in the context of the global South, we hope that this special issue can con-
tribute to the ongoing debate and challenge of realising transformative change on the ground.
Varieties of transformation
Despite the abstract meaning of transformation, there is an emerging consensus about its necessity,
and use of the term is growing in global policy and practitioner circles. Calls for transformation
feature prominently in the IPCC’s most recent Assessment Report (IPCC 2023) and the need for
urban sustainable transformation was a central takeaway of the 2018 IPCC Cities and Climate
Change Science Conference (Bai et al. 2018; Solecki et al. 2018). Moreover, a key message emerging
from the recent Global Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was that “goals for conserving and sustainably using
nature and achieving sustainability …may only be achieved through transformative changes
across economic, social, political and technological factors”(Díaz et al. 2019, 6). So great is the
IPBES’s appreciation of the need for transformative change that in fact, the scientific body is currently
preparing an assessment report specifically examining transformation. Finally, in 2016, mayors and
representatives of European cities and towns signed the Basque Declaration, committing to socio-
cultural, socio-economic, and technological transformation towards sustainability (The Basque
Declaration: New Pathways for European Cities and Towns 2016).
In light of the term’s increasing usage and prominence in global and local policy conversations,
there is a danger that it will become an empty signifier: doing much of the heavy lifting required to
signal the importance and urgency of change, whilst at the same time saying little about what might
be involved (Westman and Castán Broto 2022; Iwaniec et al. 2019). To ground the concept, both
theoretically and practically, we suggest that it is vital to understand its multiple manifestations
and to develop a heuristic that allows those seeking to enact transformative change to orient
their approach in relation to other perspectives. In short, there is a need to both map the landscape
and provide a means through which we can recognise where our own perspectives lie as well as
what they might obscure or negate. Only by critically revealing the situatedness of any one transfor-
mative approach can we begin to confront their limitations and, in doing so, hope to avoid promot-
ing hegemonic conceptions of transformation which undermine its radical potential (Westman and
Castán Broto 2022).
While several discussions of what constitutes transformative change focus on the dynamics of
change itself –abrupt or gradual, radical or incremental, linear or non-linear, smooth or turbulent
(Fazey and Leicester 2022)–O’Brien (2018, 154) points out what is really at stake in the pursuit of
transformative change is what it is that interventions are intended to solve or address. Drawing
830 EDITORIAL
on Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky (2009), she suggests that at the heart of the debate on transform-
ation is whether the problem at hand is viewed largely in technical terms or in adaptive terms, or in
other words whether problems are considered to be solvable through the application of knowledge,
technology and management or whether this requires the adaptation of existing norms, beliefs and
worldviews.
In this special issue we both build upon and challenge this approach. We agree that at the heart of
the issue of transformation is the matter of what it is that is seen to be in need of transformation and
how this is pursued. However, we suggest that a focus on the “adaptive”tends to privilege the realm
of ideas and discourses at the expense of cultural political economies, and that the binary between
technical and adaptive is itself rather too straightforward. Instead, we suggest that there are two
central axes around which the notion of transformation revolves. First is the matter of whether
the problem lies within the systems through which socio-material domains are ordered, organised,
and maintained, or whether it is with the structures that condition these relations. Second is the
issue of whether solutions are to be found in changing the means through which change takes
place –decision-making, knowledge generation, policy implementation and so forth –or whether
solutions require some form of distributional reconfiguration, such that both the nature of socio-
material conditions and how and with what consequences they are experienced are altered.
These are not either/or choices, but rather lines of sight through which transformation is viewed
and enacted, and how what constitutes successful transformative change is determined (see
Figure 1).
Both the socio-ecological systems and socio-technical systems approaches tend to work with a
systems perspective on transformation, conceiving of it both as a systemic property (Wolfram
2016) and as a potential system outcome (Wolfram and Frantzeskaki 2016 ). In the case of socio-eco-
logical systems approaches, new environmental pressures or social interventions in the system
Figure 1. Transformational Lines of Sight
LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 831
might generate transformative outcomes while in socio-technical systems approaches, transform-
ation may emerge as a result of dynamics between niche innovations and landscape pressures.
For both approaches, system change is achieved through some level of disruption and the reorgan-
isation of socio-material orders, with a particular focus in socio-technical systems literature on how
such dynamics help to “undo”lock-in and the ways in which transformation occurs through changes
to the relationships among the technologies, infrastructures, policies, governing institutions, markets
and user practices that constitute an unsustainable sociotechnical system (Fuenfschilling, Frantzes-
kaki, and Coenen 2019; Hölscher, Frantzeskaki, and Loorbach 2019; Burch et al. 2014). As a sup-
plement to this approach, work on “transformative capacity”which Wolfram, Börgstrom, and
Farrelly (2019, 440) define as “an evolving collective ability to conceive of, prepare for, initiate and
perform path-deviant urban change,”examines the underlying properties of a system which can
support it in achieving transformative outcomes.
Structural approaches to transformation, however, tend to assume that climate or environmental
action cannot be transformative without changes to the underlying social, political, or economic
structures through which such problems are produced (Pelling 2011; Pelling, O’Brien, and Matyas
2015; Satterthwaite 2014). Rooted in or complementing the literature on urban political ecology
(Swyngedouw and Kaika 2014), such approaches begin with the acknowledgement of injustices
and the tracing of uneven landscapes of power relations (Henrique and Tschakert 2021). Here, the
problem to be addressed does not so much lie within individual systems, sectors, or ecologies,
but is more pervasive, connecting notions of identity, the things we value, relations to the future,
forms of political economy, and so forth which themselves are regarded as requiring fundamental
political change if transformative outcomes are to be realised. This highlights how transformation
is not so much an outcome as it is an ever-unfolding and highly political process of redistribution
and reprioritization (Castán Broto et al. 2019). This is not to suggest that those advocating for sys-
temic transformation do not also recognise the important way in which such processes are con-
strained (and enabled) through existing socio-material structures, or indeed that those calling for
structural transformation do not also recognise the significance and value of achieving transform-
ation through existing socio-ecological or socio-technical systems. Rather it is to say that depending
on which issues are bought into focus, the scope, leverage points and challenges of transformation
will be seen in a different light, and pathways towards these goals struck differently.
The second axis around which transformation debates on usually turn has to do with what the
outcomes of transformative change will involve, or in short –how will we know transformation
when we see it? For some it is the means through which the change takes place that are a vital
site for transformation and where solutions are to be found. Here we can find arguments both
that such means need to be transformed in and of themselves –new forms of knowledge,
decision-making, participation, representation and so forth are an essential ingredient of what it
means for our responses to these issues to be transformative –and also that such a transformation
in the means of change is essential for achieving other kinds of goals (Wamsler et al. 2020; Seyfang
and Haxeltine 2012; Laycock and Mitchell 2019). The now-extensive literature on the potential of co-
production, transdisciplinarity, participatory democracy and so forth for realising sustainability is
characteristic of this perspective on transformative change (Suboticki et al. 2023; Abson et al.
2017; Fazey et al. 2018). Yet for others, such shifts in the means of achieving change are neither
sufficient nor clearly linked to the kinds of outcomes that would signal that authentically transforma-
tive change has taken place. These debates focus on the extent to which material and social out-
comes have been redistributed in transformational ways, either in terms of the extent to which
environmental challenges have been addressed, or in terms of how, by and for whom solutions
have been effective, the ways in which rights and responsibilities for achieving change have been
recalibrated, or the costs and benefits of inaction have been reconfigured (Bulkeley, Edwards, and
Fuller 2014; Revi et al. 2014; Patterson et al. 2017).
These facets of transformative change are interrelated in complex ways –no single perspective
can provide a clear line of sight as to what the destination of transformative change might look
832 EDITORIAL
like. At the same time, in adopting particular perspectives, those seeking to advocate for or intervene
to achieve transformative change may find that their view of other approaches is obscured. In order
to strengthen and deepen our work on transformative change, we suggest that a heuristic device
that enables us to locate where our perspective is coming from and how we might further other
dimensions of transformative change could be helpful.
Exploring transformation through transdisciplinary practice
Collectively, the articles in this special issue present important insights into the diverse practices and
contentious politics of urban transformation. They develop their insights through explorative trans-
disciplinary practice, undertaking shared analysis of evidence and experiences that have been gen-
erated across a range of policy-orientated, project-based or academically crafted initiatives. In so
doing, they seek to develop new ways of understanding how the capacities for and processes of
transformative change are generated.
Undertaking such research is not easy: transdisciplinary author teams had to balance the compet-
ing demands and expectations of their various professions and roles and often crafted individualised
approaches to authorship which suited their particular collaborative team. But if transdisciplinary
writing and authorship is challenging, publishing such research is even more so. For one, finding
publication venues can be difficult as the objectives of this research do not always conform to
the scope and foci of traditional academic journals. More centrally, securing reviews for transdisci-
plinary research is challenging as reviewers are reticent about how to evaluate the often atypical
form and substance of this work. For this special issue, the processes of writing and peer-review
occurred during the beginning and height of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to even greater chal-
lenges in securing reviewers for these articles. And yet, in spite of, or perhaps because of, these chal-
lenges, we ended up undertaking our own efforts to support transformational research and
publishing in Local Environment. With the journal’s editorial team, we have introduced practice
reviews as a new accepted format within the journal, recognising the value of practice-generated
insights and knowledge and institutionalising support for such research. The hope is by formalising
the place of this work within the journal, we can contribute to shifting the culture of academic
research which currently presents such high barriers to writing, publishing, and sharing transdisci-
plinary research. It is our belief that research should be both reflective of and integral to transforma-
tive change (Ernstson and Swyngedouw 2018) and that alternative practices of knowledge
generation are a productive way forward in this effort.
The six papers contained within this special issue engage in various ways with the four transfor-
mational “lines of sight”we describe in the previous section. Both the papers by Fox et al. and Estrada
et al. attend to the structural dimensions of transformative change. In their study of community-
based adaptation in Cape Town’s informal settlements, Fox et al. identify how differing understand-
ings of the permanence or impermanence of informal settlements shape how key actors diagnose
the drivers of flood vulnerabilities and envision transformative adaptation. The paper illustrates
the ways in which means-oriented approaches to transformation can fall short when structural con-
siderations are not taken into account and highlights the importance of recognising wider structures
of domination when it comes to implementing even well-intentioned processes of inclusion. Estrada
et al.’s account of the SWaCH initiative in Pune, India—a predominantly-female social cooperative of
waste pickers—notes how initiatives which fail to appreciate the intersections of gender, caste, and
class risk “unwittingly reinforcing these inequalities”and argues that when structural issues are
recognised and emphasised, significant change can be achieved. The paper examines the SWaCH
initiative as a compelling case of transformation through its pursuit of multiple social, economic,
and environmental benefits: combatting the feminisation of poverty in Indian cities, challenging
the discrimination of waste pickers through their formal partnership with the municipality, and
enhancing the efficacy of waste management through horizontal and cooperative governance
models.
LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 833
Tozer et al’s paper examines the importance of multilevel cooperation in achieving systemic
transformation in African cities. Using a novel and alternative conception of “upscaling”, they
examine how the enrolment of actors across levels enhanced the transformative potential of
major infrastructure projects in four African cities. In contrast to approaches which consider upscal-
ing horizontally, in terms of a project’s replication in new places, the paper highlights the enabling
factors which deepen a project’s ability to foster systemic transformation, pointing to the importance
of multilevel relations between cities, nation states, and international organisations for enhance the
transformative potential of projects already underway.
Across the second axis, the papers by Rochelle et al. and Kavonic and Bulkeley illustrate the inter-
play among approaches to transformation focused on means and those focused on redistributive
outcomes. Rochelle et al. reflect on ICLEI’s“Local Action for Biodiversity- Wetland South Africa”
project and demonstrate how critical processes are to the realisation of transformative outcomes,
emphasising the importance of political buy-in, policy champions, and underlying institutional
capacity in implementing transformative objectives. Their paper also highlights the importance of
considering structural factors in transformation and encourages transnational municipal networks
to attend to the underlying causes of urban environmental risks, including livelihood structures
and socio-demographic factors. Kavonic and Bulkeley examine another ICLEI project, the Urban
Natural Assets (UNA) programme in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and identify a middle path to trans-
formation between means-oriented and distribution-oriented approached in which the focus
becomes building transformative capacities. They argue that the UNA programme’s transformative
impacts came through building individual and collective transformative capacities which enabled
key actors to continually reimagine the goals of transformation, created institutional spaces of exper-
imentation where it was “safe to fail”, and established processes and relationships of knowledge co-
production which revealed multiple perspectives on and sites for transformation. Their focus on
building transformative capacities also highlights how transformative change can be fostered
through incremental, rather than rapid, shifts.
Finally, Lecavalier et al. discuss the governance modes through which urban transformation is
pursued and consider whether and how benchmarking can support or hinder transformation.
Their examination of two benchmarking initiatives finds mixed results: while the process of reporting
to benchmarks can encourage learning and help build relations between cities and global organis-
ations it can also exclude low-income cities who lack the capacity to participate. Moreover, the goals
benchmarks are calibrated to pursue can also reinforce the status quo and exclude issues of climate
justice. Ultimately, they argue that benchmarks should be one among a mix of policy tools used in
the pursuit of urban transformation.
By viewing transformation from multiple vantage points—from the streets and wetlands of emer-
ging cities to the meeting rooms and offices of transnational NGOs and multilateral development
banks—the articles within this special issue help to extend and deepen our understanding of the
complex concept of transformation and see how its practice is unfolding in diverse urban contexts.
We find that while many interventions or forms of academic inquiry start with a view of transform-
ation that is focused on the means through which it can be achieved, other dimensions of transform-
ation are never very far from the surface and the most successful projects are able to harness this
complexity to achieve change. In contrast, where the multiplicity of transformative change is not
addressed, their potential either dwindles or is actively resisted. In conclusion, we suggest that to
advance both the understanding and traction of transformative action we need to recognise its mul-
tiplicity and actively engage with its different facets. Understanding how, why, and with what result
urban action is being positioned in relation to these two axes of the debate on transformation is
crucial if we are to understand the possibilities and challenges that lie ahead for cities as they
seek to fulfil the roles that are increasingly being allocated to them within global environmental
governance.
834 EDITORIAL
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Harriet Bulkeley
Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham, UK
Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Emma Lecavalier
Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham, UK
Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
e.lecavalier@mail.utoronto.ca
Claudia Basta
PBL Netherlands Environmental Agency, The Hague, Netherlands
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