Linda Westman’s research while affiliated with The University of Sheffield and other places

... One interesting finding from our interviews is that the concept of "environment" is unclear to both the public and the various administrative bodies. At the level of Shenzhen municipality, the emphasis on developing an "ecological civilization" is a major policy guideline, reflected in national rankings and labels (Huang et al. 2023). This approach is also seen at the district level, where some districts have earned special status as "ecological" examples. ...

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Green infrastructure, native gentrification, and socialist property regimes in Shenzhen, China

... The location of the city is important, but entrepreneurs are equally important as entrepreneurs are involved in cultural, economic, political and social processes of change. Entrepreneurs constitute and drive innovations in cities, promoting urban sustainability transformations and economic growth and development (Luederitz et al., 2023). ...

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The role of urban planning for Nelson Mandela Bay’s entrepreneurial ecosystem

... When employed as a theoretical frame to interpret local understandings and evaluations of adaptation success, these imaginaries have the potential to enrich real-life adaptation processes by generating ''common understandings of important issues, underlying causes, and pathways toward optimistic futures'' (Cork et al. 2023). However, there has been little empirical use of the concept of climate imaginaries applied to urban NbS in attempting to challenge dominant framings of (urban) adaptation , with recent research suggesting instead that adaptation planning has become increasingly homogenised (and globalised) over time (Westman and Castán Broto 2022;Westman et al. 2023). Analysing local urban climate imaginaries is therefore critical and timely (Nalau and Cobb 2022;Castán Broto et al. 2024;Pelling et al. 2024). ...

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A relational turn in climate change adaptation: Evidence from urban nature-based solutions

... These two dimensions split into 'high' and 'low' yield four policy categories: symbolic, concrete, contributive and contiguous policies (Table 1). We illustrate the categories with the help of policies related to the health risks of heat and flood as these are the most common risks in cities (Dodman et al. 2023). ...

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Making sense of response: How policies affect climate vulnerability

... While cities rushed to stake their future economic viability on maximizing their relatability to a larger world, operationalized by availing all kinds of opportunities to enable that larger world to 'show up' within city jurisdictionsand in ways in which such jurisdiction was inevitably diminished by that very availing-their capacity to shape anything like a common municipal identity has increasingly become impossible (Balducci, Fedeli, and Curci 2017;Levy et al. 2017). Identifying the metropolitan scale as a realm of intervention requires its active construction as the locus of place-based alternative in globalized space (D'Albergo and Lefèvre 2018). ...

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Radical unknowability: an essay on solidarities and multiform urban life

... Lo and Broto (2019) found that the experimental multi-level governance in the photovoltaics poverty alleviation pilot to promote low-carbon sustainable development and renewable energy is "a combination of top-down mechanisms of control, bottom-up responses, and the broader contradictions that emerge from their interactions". Liu et al. (2022) conceptualized lowcarbon technology transfer as a multi-level governance process and revealed that domestic actors determine the scope of collaboration and the purpose of technology transfer, which results in the process serving the domestic political and economic interests. In the Australian context, Peel et al. (2012) found a decentralized approach to climate-related law-making to allow sub-national and local governments to take more responsibility for supporting climate change adaptation and have differentiated responses necessary to address local needs. ...

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Low-carbon city development from a multi-level governance perspective: a comparative study of Shenzhen, China and the City of Darebin, Australia

... Note: This table adopts a similar format/approach to that used by Ahmed et al. (2022) in their consideration of strategies to support the experiences of early-career academics. ...

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Social science as social action to address inequalities

... La adopción de modelos de negocio sostenibles enfrenta desafíos significativos, especialmente para los emprendedores. Las dificultades que estos emprendedores encuentran al introducir MNS son variadas y complejas (Westman et al., 2023). Además, las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYME) de base tecnológica operan en un entorno de alta incertidumbre, lo que puede dificultar la implementación efectiva de estrategias sostenibles (Ma, Liu, & Jia, 2023). ...

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La relación entre PYMES, innovación y sustentabilidad desde un análisis bibliométrico

... As cities grow, they often absorb smaller towns [8] and expand their metropolitan boundaries. While this process can drive economic and social progress, it also poses challenges for infrastructure systems [9]. Transportation networks [10], energy supplies [11], education [12], and healthcare [13] frequently struggle to meet the demands of a rapidly growing population. ...

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Barabási–Albert-Based Network Growth Model to Sustainable Urban Planning

... It is increasingly assumed that urban adaptation progress is linked to ''greening'' cities (Depietri and McPhearson 2017;Angelo 2019;Dorst et al. 2019). The rise of the NbS agenda is currently influencing narratives on what successful adaptation looks like in cities in this way (Melanidis and Hagerman 2022;Neidig et al. 2022;Westman and Castán Broto 2022). However, critics highlight how the narrative shift has not necessarily clarified how to recognise or evaluate successful adaptation in practice (Tozer et al. 2020;Woroniecki et al. 2020;Westman and Castán Broto 2022). ...

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A relational turn in climate change adaptation: Evidence from urban nature-based solutions