Transition Cities – a Sociotechnical Approach for Transformative Innovation

The paper draws on the sociotechnical transitions and system innovation framework of Geels and others to develop a new approach at city level to govern and manage the transition to a low carbon society

It reports on the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) Climate-KIC Transition Cities project. This involves a partnership of 6 cities – Birmingham, Frankfurt, Castellon/Valencia, Bologna/Modena, Wroclaw & Budapest. The aim was to develop a transition policy capability to facilitate transformative low carbon innovation in three major end use sectors – buildings, transport, and energy networks.

An inventory was made of all low carbon innovation projects underway in the partner cities. This used a broad sociotechnical definition of innovation and included a diversity  in terms of scale, knowledge and types of innovation. 107 projects were identified with a value of €2 billion in the 3 areas identified. The distribution was similar to earlier studies on city climate innovation but was at a significantly higher scale, suggesting that the national focus of innovation policy is underestimating the extent of activity at the city level. However despite the extent of activity they tended to be treated as separate, disconnected projects and there was little evidence of strategies to link and enable wider system innovation.

An analytical and practical framework was developed in order to facilitate the clustering of projects around clearer arenas of system innovation.  Social network analysis involving stakeholder participation was carried out to assess the prospects for system innovation and plausible transition pathways up to 2020 in each partner city. The results showed major differences in the prospects for transition in different arenas.  It also showed the emergence of key integrating non-technological innovations in different cities with the capacity to play a key role in making transition happen.