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Are you interested in what is the role of academic researchers in establishing the better future of cities?

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Our summary today works with the article titled Urban futures: systemic or system changing interventions? A literature review using Meadows’ leverage points as analytical framework from 2020 by Corina Angheloiu and Mike Tennant, published in the Cities journal. This is a great preparation to the following Panel discussion in episode 150 with Jeni Paay, Richard Manasseh and Magnus Moglia conversing about academia’s role and responsibilities for the better future of cities. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see what needs to be changed to achieve sustainability through academic literature. This article presents the need to rethink not just outcomes but processes for urban transformations including the roles and agency of urban researchers.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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Urban challenges have been calling for new ways of researching and intervening in an increasingly interconnected and globalised urban condition. This has been mirrored by an increased interest in the role of cities in achieving sustainable goals, like the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The authors focused on four key concepts emerging from these attempts: urban sustainability, urban transitions, urban transformation and urban resilience. These have become catch-all phrases that encompass the normative concerns of a variety of actors, from policy-makers and academics to civil society organisations and activists. This article scrutinises the types of interventions advocated across the four concepts through a review of academic-led literature to understand whether current research studies on urban-led change are conducted from an understanding of change processes in a more complex way.

What do the four key concepts – urban resilience, urban transitions, urban transformation, and urban sustainability mean? Urban resilience is the ability of an urban system to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity. Urban transition is the process of multiple actors partaking in sociotechnical change through innovation, adaption, and adoption usually towards sustainable modes of urban production and consumption. Urban transformation is the process and the outcome of changing the systemic configuration of urban areas, mostly studied with a view to its sustainability performance or achievements. Urban sustainability is resource management of urban regions through ways that guarantee the well-being of current and future generations ensuring distributional equity. Even though the concepts have somewhat clear definitions in academic literature, their practical use are rather questionable.

The findings indicate that although academic-led literature advocates for systemic change towards sustainability as an outcome of a diverse palette of urban interventions, less consideration is given to the means and enablers for achieving these. The literature is predominantly concerned with inventing parameters and the Sustainable Development Goals as the driving force, the potential for market stimulation and the promise of green infrastructure. Feedback loops and system structure come second in proportion and are nearly equally represented in the literature. Mental models are sparsely present with themes emerging around the need to inquire into what we mean by normativity and the need to actively reflect on the deeper paradigm underpinning events, patterns and behaviour.

Across urban resilience, urban transformation, urban transition and urban sustainability, the relationship between process and outcome becomes apparent as a dynamic. On one hand, the interventions that fall in the parameters category predominantly advocate for deploying existing mechanisms to achieve system changing outcomes. On the other hand, the interventions that fall in the feedback loops, system structure and mental models categories predominantly advocate for either rethinking existing or developing new processes as prerequisite for achieving system changing outcomes. While the two perspectives are closely entangled, the disproportionate focus on parameters poses the risk of supporting long-term target setting or infrastructural decisions that are not systemic.

This can result in falling short of acknowledging and interrogating the dominant worldview, values and paradigms underpinning them – only strengthening the status quo. Worldviews, values and paradigms shape urban interventions. There is a need to focus on processes as much as on outcomes and this article cautions against solely focusing on parameters while disregarding the feedback loops, system structure and mental models that are legitimised. Across the four concepts – urban resilience, urban transitions, urban transformation and urban sustainability – limited resources and imperfect information requires a process of understanding and negotiating trade-offs. When intervening in complex systems characterised by wicked problems, there are not good or bad interventions, but better or worse ones.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. In academic research, there is a need to focus on processes as much as on outcomes and this article cautions against solely focusing on parameters while disregarding the feedback loops, system structure and mental models that are legitimised.
2. The disproportionate focus on parameters poses the risk of supporting long-term target setting or infrastructural decisions that are not systemic which can result in falling short of acknowledging and interrogating the dominant worldview, values and paradigms underpinning them – only strengthening the status quo.
3. When intervening in complex systems characterised by wicked problems, there are not good or bad interventions, but better or worse ones.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What do you think about academic research? How do you interact with it?
2. Why do you think parameters are more common than feedback loops, system structure and mental models?
3. What could be enhanced in academic research in your opinion?

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