International Lecture Series - Planning in Transition

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Aalborg University (Denmark)

Date: October 23rd , 2024, 13.15-15.00

Abstract

While different sectors have successfully limited CO2 emissions in preventing severe climate change, the transportation sector has remained overly static and stands out as even moving in the wrong direction. This sector is, to a high degree, marked by technocratic transport planning and auto-logic implementation over the last 100 years. Within the mobilities paradigm, transport is researched as a larger system constituting economic, social and cultural aspects of society. In this tradition, achieving sustainable mobilities needs an understanding of everyday life mobility cultures and the role planning plays in shaping this. Examples on planning concepts, like for instance the 15-minute city, will be used to illustrate how different sustainable mobilities futures might be achieved.

Bio

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen is Professor in Urban Planning at Aalborg University and have an interdisciplinary background linking sociology, geography, urban planning, and the sociology of technology. Her research focuses on mobilities practices and the interrelation between politics, planning and everyday life.

Video: youtu.be/9orfTFpA1Xc

Lela Rekhviashvili, Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (Germany)

Date: October 2, 2024, 15.15 – 17.00, TEMCAS

Abstract

In critiquing Europe's mobility transitions, most social science and humanities research on transport and mobility is concerned with the slow pace of decarbonization. Such research raises a number of social justice issues and challenges the techno-optimistic and growth-oriented character of the EU's transition efforts. However, often concerned primarily with needs of European mobility users, such research rarely asks which human and more than human natures pay the social and environmental price of mobility transitions.

In this talk, I confront existing transport and mobility research on mobility transitions with discussions of the colonial-extractivist character of green transitions, particularly in Europe's peripheries. I draw on emerging theorizations of the class politics of green transitions to link mobility transitions to energy transitions in Georgia. I show that increasing renewable energy production capacity is linked to the accumulation of wealth for ultra-carbonized classes and the satisfaction of the needs of Europe's decarbonizing classes. Meanwhile, still-carbonized classes in Europe's peripheries are too poor to decarbonize, and uncarbonized rural populations are dispossessed of land and water for renewable energy infrastructure.

Bio

Lela Rekhviashvili is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, specialising in political economy and regional geography, with a regional focus on post-socialist Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Broadly speaking, she is interested in transformations of capitalism and its contestation, especially in peripheral economies. Her research increasingly focuses on contestation over infrastructure-led development and the role of infrastructure in imagining and (re)claiming socialist and capitalist modernities. She has also published on informal economic practices, urban transport and mobility, marketization and social embeddedness, contentious action and the politics of public space.

Video: https://youtu.be/3WuQf8oLSGI

Peter Cox, University of Chester (UK)

Date: September 19, 2024, 15.15 – 17.00, TEMCAS

Abstract

The context of the Anthropocene challenges us to find new ways of living and being with each other, and with the planet. For those living in the privileged zones of high-energy, high carbon societies that consume disproportionately large measures of available resources, to live responsibly will require challenging the dependence on constant growth in resource use, and reductions from its currently unsustainable levels.

In the search for more sustainable and just mobilities, current dependencies on highspeed, high-energy, personal travel are demonstrably problematic. Promotion of increased levels of walking and cycling as sustainable mobility solutions, especially in urban areas, has become a signature solution. Many current proposals, however, are framed within a vision of increased active mobility as a means to continue high consumption in growth-oriented societies.

To challenge the emphasis on efficiency rather than sufficiency a different conception of cycling and lightweight e-mobilities mobilities is required - one that challenges their assumption as substitutes for current automotive practices.

This presentation outlines a project to explore what a radical shift of perspective might entail and what a vision of vélomobility could look like as a means not to sustain growth-oriented society but to challenge it.

Bio

Peter Cox Is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chester, UK and is author of a number of books including Cycling: a sociology of vélomobility (Routledge 2019), Cycling Activism: bike politics and social movements (Routledge 2024) and the forthcoming Anthropocene Mobilities: walking, cycling and caring for the commons (Bloomsbury 2025).

Video: https://youtu.be/DQQT0e8lxEc

Mimi Sheller, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (USA)

Date: August 20, 2024, 13.15 – 15.00, TEM21

Abstract

The sustainable mobilities transition raises dilemmas around mobility justice. What if building decarbonized green infrastructure displaces lower-income communities, hurts existing workers, only benefits kinetic elites, and is driving ecologically destructive extraction of transition metals? This talk asks us to re-think climate change, climate mobilities, and climate adaptation as problems of mobility in/justice within sustainable mobilities.

Bio

Mimi Sheller, PhD, Dean of The Global School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA, is an interdisciplinary scholar in Caribbean Studies, Mobilities Research, and Social Theory. She is Co-Principal Investigator for NOAA-CAP Caribbean Climate Adaptation Network (2023-2027) and PI for another NOAA-CAP collaborative grant in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. She has published more than 150 articles and chapters and is the author or co-editor of fifteen books, including Advanced Introduction to Mobilities (Edward Elgar, 2021); Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene (Duke University Press, 2020); Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (Verso, 2018); and Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity (MIT Press, 2014).

Video: https://youtu.be/fls2J4eYdsw?si=5_86xuy_1GAXx4BV

Greg Marsden, University of Leeds (UK)

Date: June 13, 2024, 13.15 – 15.00, TEMCAS

Abstract

This talk will explore the challenge and opportunity of place-based approaches to decarbonisation. Drawing on research in the Energy Demand Research Centre it will look at how we can interpret place and how it fits with a multi-scalar understanding of the policy process. Using examples of downscaling national approaches to bottom-up neighbourhood scale initiatives it will demonstrate the ways in which place matters to outcomes, and then how policy could respond to this. The talk will focus on examples from the transport domain but will also address the nexus of housing, heating and transport.

Bio

Greg Marsden is Professor of Transport Governance at the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. He is the Theme Leader for Place in the Energy Demand Research Centre and established DecarboN8, a network to understand place-based decarbonisation. He regularly advises local, regional and national governments.

Video: https://youtu.be/pAfitMS0D3k?si=h-Emhvna3dlBBzET

Wojciech Kębłowski, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium)

Date: May 15, 2024, 15.15 – 17.00, TEMCAS

Abstract

In my lecture I will explore and address the prevailing hegemony within transport studies. On the one hand, transport continues to be studied from a largely neoclassical standpoint, as a field shaped and guided by economics and engineering, with strong focus on efficiency and rationality. On the other, contemporary transport debates continue to find strong inspiration in the notion of “sustainable” development, which strongly resonates among academics and practitioners alike. While placing important environmental issues on the agenda, sustainable approaches to transport exhibit a number of serious limitations, as they have insufficiently engaged with diverse social, political and economic dynamics that shape how transport is planned, regulated, organised, practiced and contested across different geographical contexts.

To respond to this gap, I propose to develop an emerging “critical” perspective on transport, which considers it to be socially constructed and contested, underpinned by structural power dynamics, class relations, gender and patriarchy, ethnicity and race. Building on critical social theory, I argue that being about transport involves approaching it as a phenomenon that reproduces complex social and spatial processes and acts as a crucial component of capitalism. On the one hand, this means analysing transport policy, practice and infrastructure through the lens of capitalist dynamics observed in particular contexts. On the other, it entails exploring the complexity of processes, institutions and interests that make up a society through its transport.

Bio

Wojciech is Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research is located at the nexus of transport and urban geography. He is the editor of collections in leading journals of urban and transport studies, including Transportation Research Part A, Journal of Transport Geography, Geoforum, and Urban Studies.

Video: https://youtu.be/s_fyfuEU4NA?si=MP5T_1gfAZ8esrHu

Anna Nikolaeva, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Date: April 18, 2024, 13.15 – 15.00, TEMCAS

Abstract

This talk highlights the need to focus on the 'politics of non-knowing' in the context of just transitions towards low-carbon mobility. By the ‘politics of non-knowing’, following Ulrich Beck and Peter Wehling (2012), I understand the societal debates on what is unknown and what should and can be known. Using the case study of the datafication of cycling in four European cities, I will explore the epistemic effects of car-centrism and the role of smart technology in these discussions. I conclude by proposing a research agenda on the politics of non-knowing in just mobility transitions.

Bio

Anna Nikolaeva is Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at the University of Amsterdam. In her research, writing and teaching she engages with a variety of topics in urban planning and human geography, currently focusing on the intersections between low-carbon and just mobility transitions, gendered mobilities and the politics of knowledge in planning. Previously, she has worked at Utrecht University, Royal Holloway University of London and VU University Amsterdam.

Video: https://youtu.be/XsvWPz7xAMk?si=Slqf3RhzHY5HAbZI

Tim Schwanen, University of Oxford (UK)

Date: March 21, 2024, 13.15 – 15.00, TEMCAS

Abstract

Electrification of transport is essential to limiting the sector’s contribution to climate breakdown, but it is increasingly recognised that electrification should not only be rapid and efficient but also socially just. It is also clear that policy and local governments have key roles to play in achieving just electric mobility transitions, even though the policy processes that shape and condition just transition trajectories remain poorly studied and understood. In this lecture, I will first outline an analytical approach to studying the role of local policy in just electric mobility transitions that builds and integrates thinking on policy assemblages, governmentality and mobility justice. I will then use that approach to consider the potential for just electric mobility transitions in four medium-sized European cities at different stages of the electrification process – Oslo, Utrecht, Bristol, and Poznan. Using policy documents analysis, I will analyse the working arrangements of problematisations, techniques, technologies, logics and knowledges of which electric mobility policy in each city exist, as well as the multiple effects these generate. Implications for the realisation of just transitions in urban mobility will be identified and discussed.

Bio

Tim is Director of the Transport Studies Unit, Professor of Transport Geography in the School of Geography and the Environment, and also a Supernumerary Fellow at St Anne's College, University of Oxford. Tim is one of the editors of Environment and Planning F: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice, the youngest addition to the E&P family, and he serves on the editorial advisory boards of five journals focused on transport and mobility. Since September 2021 he has been a Fellow of the Academy for Social Sciences, the UK's national academy for academics, learned societies and practitioners in the social sciences.

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMaoGZSXrak

Nicola Spurling, Lancaster University (UK)

Date: March 6 2024, 13.15 – 15.00, TEMCAS

Abstract

As societies across the globe face up to climate change, the magnitude of the challenge to decarbonise at every scale is evident. In this talk, I draw on my engagements with sustainable everyday mobility in the last decade to introduce five ways with mobilities and futures. Using these examples, the paper articulates the potential of ethnographic and participatory approaches for the development of societies and economies grounded in just and sustainable mobilities. I will discuss concepts including mobility systems/practices/justice/methods and how I have brought them into dialogue with ideas of intervention, utopia and prefiguration. I will reflect on my experiences with different stakeholders and on how my thinking about decarbonising mobility, and the role(s) of qualitative social scientists within this field, have developed.

Bio

Dr Nicola Spurling, Director of Centre for Mobilities Research & Senior Lecturer, Lancaster Sociology, specialises in climate change, culture and society. Initially trained in anthropology, she developed her research in interdisciplinary projects, including the Sustainable Practices Research Group, the Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand Centre, the Institute for Social Futures, and the Centre for Mobilities Research.

Workshop
In connection to the lecture, there will aslo be a structured writing retreat and workshop entitled "Mobilities and Futures in social science", on March 7th in Norrköping, led by Nicola Spurling.

• Full workshop programme (pdf)

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PBpeMVW0c

Peter Wells, Professor, Cardiff Business School

Date: October 26, 2023 at 13.00-14.30

Abstract

For decades mobility planning has been largely premised on ‘predict and provide’ underpinned by the notion more mobility is better than less. Coupled with a ‘net-zero’
policy obsession, the result has been resource-intensive low carbon technologies that exacerbate social inequalities and create new geo-political risks. However, it we take a ‘sufficiency’ perspective and start with the premise that mobility is a derived demand that creates waste (of time, of resources, of money) then our goal is to reduce mobility demand and burdens via planning interventions in transport systems, business model innovation, fiscal regimes, behavioural change, and technology development (including alternatives to mobility). The intention therefore is to create the least need for mobility, provided in the least resource-intensive manner, with the lowest negative externalities, for the vast majority of the population.

Bio

Peter Wells is Professor of Business and Sustainability, and Pro-Dean of Public Value, at Cardiff Business School. His main research interests focus on sustainable transitions and business model innovation (both separately and in combination) in the automobility industry.

Moritz Albrecht, Associate Professor, University of Eastern Finland

Date: October 19, 2023 at 15.00-16.30

Abstract

The EU bioeconomy spans a vast policy sphere of multiple policy strategies, visions, and practices aimed to provide a socio-economically beneficial greening of production systems and adjunct localities. Yet, criticism of bioeconomy’s practices question its capacities as an enabler of a spatially cohesive, and sustainable transformation. Contrary current reformulations of policies and their narratives more prominently rise sustainability and a local focus, thereby implying a European bioeconomy turn open to alternatives and spatially attentive approaches. The lecture addresses this topic by focusing on the expressive components in various novel sectors and places. It contrasts reformulated policy narratives with an array of expressive components that guide sectoral developments and scrutinizes how they contribute to the capacity of (re-)territorializing EU bioeconomy assemblages.

Bio

Moritz Albrecht is Associate Professor for Environmental-Political Humangeography at the University of Eastern Finland. His focus is on sustainably framed economic policies in Europe, particularly bioeconomy policies, their socio-spatial processes of mobility and translation as well as their assembly in various localities. He sets special focus on the role of bioeconomy (policy) narratives in sustainability transformations and for regional development.

 

Prof. Bernhard Truffer, Eawag/Utrecht University

Date: May 25, 2023 at 15.00

Abstract

Informal settlement upgrading is one of the important and urgent urban planning tasks in developing cities around the world. Despite increasing resources devoted to these projects and mainstreaming participation as a planning tool, impacts on livelihoods of residents were often limited or sometimes even negative. We propose to analyze the impact of infrastructures on livelihoods by mobilizing – but also substantially extending – concepts of recent theorizing in sustainability transitions research. More specifically, we elaborate how the “socio-technical regime” delivered with the new infrastructure can produce manifold “structural tensions” with the rules and practices that structure the livelihoods of the residents and how they in turn “appropriate” these by either aligning, ignoring or even destroying the offerings. Empirical cases related to informal settlements in Nairobi and in secondary cities of Kenya.

Bio

Bernhard Truffer is full professor at Utrecht University on the geography of transitions and group leader at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). He has worked on transitions research by contributing to the core conceptual frameworks in the field, in particular extending it into the fields of geography and neo-institutional approaches.

Niamh Moore-Cherry, Professor, School of Geography and College of Social Sciences and Law, University College Dublin 

https://youtu.be/zRlnNbB0Ae8

Date: May 4, 2023 at 15.00

Abstract

In recent years, a strong “place-based turn” has become evident in public policy in Ireland and elsewhere. Urban and regional development policies and programmes that strive to achieve sustainability must be carefully developed and implemented to ensure that they do not compound pre-existing social and spatial inequalities. New methodologies are required to support the state and other actors in identifying key challenges and developing appropriate policy responses. Drawing on two recent projects, one in Dublin City and the other focusing on three areas outside the large metropolitan areas, this paper demonstrates the value of meaningful co-creation in developing and implementing more place-based urban and regional policy.

Bio

Niamh is Professor of Urban Governance and Development in the School of Geography, Deputy College Principal in the UCD College of Social Sciences and Law, and Honorary Professor at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her research is focused on understanding the governance of (re)development, metropolitanisation and the impact of territorial politics on urban and regional outcomes. She founded and leads the Cities, Governance and Sustainability (www.citiesgovernancesustainability.eu) research group in UCD which brings together academic, policy and community engaged work. In summer 2022, she was appointed as an independent member of the advisory National Economic and Social Council (NESC) by the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister).

Nevin Cohen, Associate Professor, CUNY School of Public Health Director, CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute

Date: April 13, 2023

Abstract

Cities have implemented innovative policies and programs to reduce food insecurity, encourage healthier diets, shorten food supply chains, and support food justice. But as cities implement these innovations, the food system is changing dramatically due to digitalization. In just the past few decades, the growth of e-commerce, app-based labor platforms, and digital marketing have transformed urban foodscapes, with positive and negative consequences for public health, urban planning, and social equity. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated these trends as food businesses shifted to online sales and locked-down consumers embraced digital food provisioning. These are not just NYC phenomena: China and India are rapidly adopting digitalization in food distribution, and Europe is too, notwithstanding long traditions of public markets and short food supply chains. A lesson of the pandemic is how rapidly seemingly entrenched practices can change and the perils of not imagining and planning for socio-technical shifts.

Our existing efforts to improve the food environment risk becoming less effective, or anachronistic and obsolete, if food retail continues to shift from primarily brick-and-mortar retail to a mix of conventional and online purveyors, or in some cases to entirely online distribution channels. Forecasting the types of impacts that will arise can help us develop policies and programs to ensure that the shift online improves health and sustainability and does not exacerbate existing social and environmental inequities. This talk will review the known and potential effects of digitalization of the food system, on food access, prices, diets, urban mobility patterns, food labor, social equity, and the environment. It will discuss research imperatives and steps for planners and policymakers to integrate such research into food policy.

Bio

Nevin Cohen is an Associate Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health and Director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. His research explores the policies, governance systems, practices, and infrastructure to support just, healthy, and resilient urban and regional food systems. Current projects include the development of a food environment equity dashboard for New York City, a five-country study of the food, water, and energy nexus of urban agriculture, research on changing mobility patterns and food retail access, and a study of online grocery use by SNAP participants. Dr. Cohen is the co-author of Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City (University of GA Press), which examines the potential of urban farms and gardens to address racial, gender, and class oppression. He has a PhD in Urban Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers University, a Masters in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA from Cornell University.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT-LT0V9BYQ&t=1s

 

Alessandro Balducci, Polytechnic University of Milan.

Date: March 16, 2023 at 15-16.30

Abstract

This lecture will focus on how planning has been marginalized by the passive adaptation of space to the need of an economic development driven by globalisation, financialization and digitalization. I will analyze the most relevant processes of change, visible and sometimes invisible, that are affecting the economy, society and institutions as well as their impact on the physical space to propose a vision that starting from the last ring in the chain, the physical space, could be able to deal with some of the most negative effects of the current development model.

Bio

Architect and PhD in Planning. Professor of Planning and Urban Policies at Politecnico di Milano. He has been Vice-Rector of Politecnico di Milano, Deputy- mayor for Urban Planning of the City of Milan, President of AESOP, the Association of the European Schools of Planning, Chair of the Italian Society of Urbanists (SIU), founding member of the European Urban Research Association (EURA), first president of Urban@it - National Centre for Urban Policies Studies.

He has been responsible of European and National research projects; and as a planner he has been responsible for many projects in Italy and abroad (Shanghai, Xi'an, Dubai).
He has been teaching at the Faculty of Architecture of Pescara (1992-1995), has been visiting scholar at U.C. Berkeley, USA, and visiting professor at the University of Reims, France, Tongji University, China, Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, MIT Cambridge, USA, at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland, and at the Zhejiang University of Huangzhou, China. He is author/editor of 24 books and of articles and essays in Italian and English. Website : www.sandrobalducci.co

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ZERLXEkRY

Teis Hansen, Professor at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, and Senior Research Scientist at the Department of Technology Management, SINTEF, Trondheim

Date: February 23, 2023 at 15-16.30

Abstract

Regional development policy has for long been centred on promoting a specific part of the economy: exporting industries, in particular those characterized by high R&D intensity. A central assumption is that growth in these industries will trickle down to other sectors and create value that can finance a well-functioning society. However, this approach has not managed to convincingly address a number persistent problems, in particular social polarization, interregional inequality and environmental sustainability. Consequently, this has provoked multiple attempts to rethink our approach to development including Doughnut Economics, the Everyday Economy, and the Foundational Economy. This talk focuses on the latter of these approaches, which suggests that the centre of development policy should be the part of the economy that directly supports everyday life, i.e. health and welfare services, education, transportation, utilities, and food processing and retailing. Drawing on empirical work and insights from other literatures, the talk provides a sympathetic critique of this approach to regional development.

Bio

Teis Hansen is Professor at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, and Senior Research Scientist at the Department of Technology Management, SINTEF, Trondheim.

Teis has an interest in the relations between geography, innovation and sustainability. His research focuses on the importance of spatial aspects of innovation processes for sustainability transitions; transformative innovation policy; green urban and regional development; foundational economy; and technology transfer from developed to emerging economies. Empirically, his research is focused on the energy system, energy-intensive industries, maritime transport, and the bioeconomy. He is also a member of the Danish Government’s expert group on the role of research in the green transition.

Video: https://youtu.be/G-RGVjulM6Y

Professor Vanesa Castán Broto, University of Sheffield 

Date: January 12, 2023 at 15-16.30

Abstract

In the shadow of global environmental challenges, international policy discourses tie the future of humanity to the future of cities. The planning of cities, but also how they are lived and experienced, shapes the use of energy and resources, the production of carbon emissions, and the vulnerabilities to climate change and other environmental impacts. A recent intervention in this debate, UN-Habitat’s 2022 World Cities Report, links urban futures to the recognition of diverse modes of settlement that require detailed attention to addressing differential vulnerabilities linked to processes of marginalization and inequality. In the context of climate change, however, this acknowledgment entails understanding the complex linkages between imperial projects of economic exploitation that have driven environmental impacts on a global scale. Reparative urbanism refers to people’s active processes of socio-material engagement, from repairing infrastructure networks to cleaning public spaces, that enable the city to host those people’s lives. In a precarious urban environment, citizens engage routinely in reparative urbanism, sometimes linking their actions to wider future aspirations, such as reducing carbon emissions and improving wellbeing through built environment innovations suited to local needs and capacities. The question here is the extent to which the work of maintaining the city is indeed reparative.

• In which ways do such reparations address the inherent injustices embedded in the built environment?
• How do these forms of reparative urbanism tackle the roots of urban vulnerability, and challenge its constitution in imperial histories?
• How does reparative urbanism reconfigure environmental responsibilities in the urban environment?
• What role does reparative urbanism play in the constitution of urban futures?

Hon.-Prof. Dr. Timothy Moss, Senior Researcher, IRI THESys

Date: February 2, 2023 at 15-16.30

Abstract

In my talk I unpack what urban infrastructure planning can mean – as a concept and as a practice – using the experience of Berlin’s infrastructure history as a generative case. I take a rich variety of future-oriented interventions from the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, socialist East Berlin, the insular West Berlin and the reunited city to illustrate diverse modes of infrastructure planning that reach far beyond standardized, formal planning procedures. This historicized ‘technopolitics’ of infrastructure planning I use to consider how past planning of infrastructure can be rendered relevant to today’s challenges.

Tim is a Senior Researcher at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) at the Humboldt University of Berlin and Honorary Professor at the Leibniz University Hannover. His research is distinctive for connecting historical studies of infrastructure with contemporary debates on sociotechnical and urban transitions.