Rewiring Co-creation: Towards Transition Arenas with Urban Transformative Capacity

Abstract

Cities, as significant contributors to global warming, have a crucial responsibility to implement climate mitigation measures. Addressing this complex challenge requires innovative governance and societal involvement. Transition Arenas (TAs) are seen as transformative tools for tackling such issues, but practical pathways for cities to implement them and foster their transformative capacities are often unclear. In order to provide this, this research delves into the Valencia's Energy Transition Arena in Spain, a two-year initiative that gathered stakeholders monthly to co-create the city's energy transition roadmap. The Urban Transformative Capacity framework provides the needed conceptual lens to analyze and enhance the transformative potential of this TA through its strategic, tactical, operational, and reflexive stages. It also brings a new “relational” governance level that integrates TAs into wider systems, promoting systemic alliances. The study also emphasizes the importance of autonomous processes free from external influence for innovation and engagement, structured strategies for effective collective intelligence, action-focused processes in resource-limited contexts, and formal learning strategies for systemic impact.