Transcript Cities of Tomorrow

Developing Knowledge-Intensive Low Carbon Transitions.
Contexts, Challenges and Consequences
Simon Marvin and Beth Perry
http://www.surf.salford.ac.uk
“Cities of Tomorrow”
Workshop 1: Urban Challenges
European Commission, DG Regional Policy
Tuesday 29th June 2010
SURF’s Work
Urban and
Regional
Governance
Urban
Knowledge
Exchange
Urban
Ecological
Security
Cities of
Tomorrow
Urban
Transitions
Knowledge
Regions and
Cities
Low Carbon
Urban Futures
The Future of
Universities
2
Argument
• Contexts:
– Knowledge and Sustainability in Multi-Scalar, MultiActor Environments
• Challenges:
– Eg.Greater Manchester’s Attempts to Build LowCarbon Knowledge Economies
• Consequences:
– Knowledge for Sustainability: Populating the ‘Missing
Middle’
3
A Framework of Understanding
Knowledge Economy and
Technological Change
+
Climate Change and
Resource Constraint
+
Globalisation and
(Sub)Regionalisation
Urban Paradigms
Economic, Scientific, Socio-Cultural, Ecological
and Political Rationales
Models of National
(Knowledge) Capitalism
+
Governance Systems
+
Research Systems
Urban
Potentials
Choices, Capacities and Capabilities
Transition Journeys
+
Emerging Priorities
+
Turning Points
Urban Policies
Strengths and Weaknesses of Existing
Approaches
4
Manchester:
Low Carbon Economic Positioning
•
Positioning Manchester as low carbon first mover
–
To avoid the economic costs of inaction on climate
change and to move rapidly to accrue the economic
opportunities and benefits
–
To maintain a perceived view of Manchester as
entrepreneurially pre-eminent as viewed by comparator
cities and national government
•
Attracting investment and providing business support
–
The provision of relevant forms of support in relation to
this agenda for businesses
–
The promotion of inward investment
•
A test-bed for national targets
–
GM Dec 2009 UK’s 4th LCEA & 1st LCEA for Built
Environment
–
Draft prospectus claims - contribute to saving 6 million
tn CO2 - support 34,800 jobs & exemplar for region &
UK
–
Designation requires GM work with BIS, DECC, Carbon
Trust, EST, NWDA etc
–
Position GM to attract investment – and showcase the
achievement of national targets
5
Manchester’s
Knowledge/Innovation Journey
•Co-evolution and multi-level
interactions
•Broad visions, traditional
interpretations
•First-mover status; test-bed
and pilot for new models
•Glocal aspirations:
excellence, relevance
•Assumptions about
knowledge, innovation, space
and scale
6
An (E)Merging Agenda?
Some overlaps:
•
‘Innovation’; ‘scale’; ‘multiarena partnerships’
•
E.g. IIF: carbon co-op,
proposal for low carbon
economic area, smart city and
‘living labs’
•
E.g. Low Carbon Economic
Area for Built Environment –
inc. ‘low carbon laboratory’
•
Conceptualisation of cities as
sites of experimentation
But similarities are greater
in the framing of the
issues than in an
exploration of synergies
and possibilities
Knowledge economy / low
carbon economy as
‘economic’ opportunity
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Styles of Response
Table 1
Dominant Responses
Feature
Econo-centric
Objectives
Tangible
Measurements
Global excellence
Scales
Linear, products, supply/demand,
push/pull models
Narrow;
codified
disciplinary;
Technological,
solutions
Varied
Intangible
Glocal ‘excellent relevance’ and
‘relevant excellence’
Ecosystems,
flows
networks
and
sectoral;
Knowledges
Broad; interdisciplinary; crosssectoral; tacit
mechanistic
Mechanisms
Multiple
interventions
mechanisms
Transferable models
Elites: corporate, governments,
major institutions
Divisible
Processes
Alternative Responses
Learning
Social Interests
Concepts of Economic and
Ecological Security
and
Context-sensitive approaches
Wide stakeholders, potential
beneficiaries and participants
Collective
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Gaps in Understanding: A ‘Missing Middle’
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
‘Missing Middle’ between expectations, capacities and
capability
Devolution of responsibility without resource
Social processes characterised by ‘making do or improvisation’.
Research resources used to inform standalone evaluation
rather than city-regional learning.
Poor communication amongst stakeholders about knowledge
needs leads to inefficient use of resources.
Weak mechanisms for mediating between stakeholders and
HEIs in understanding how needs and responses could be
mutually constructed
An absence of a space for thinking without consequence to
develop, test and critique ideas and policies in a structured and
systematic way
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Challenges
• Configuring discourses and visions?
• Assumptions and presumptions?
• Cities as passive or active, receiving or mediating sites of
activity?
• Local experiments, upscaling and managed systemic transitions?
• Actors involved, how positioned, coalitions of power and
interest?
• Capacities and capabilities of different cities to respond?
• Social and material consequences of transitions?
• Where is the space for alternatives to be discussed, conceived
and implemented, by whom and with what effects?
• What knowledge is needed and how to inform more sustainable
knowledge-based futures?
10