Exploring transformative spaces in sustainability transitions

Abstract

Various actors convene in spaces such as platforms and projects to engage in transformative changes toward sustainability. Driven by calls for co-produced scientific knowledge, sustainability scholars have developed several approaches to organizing, facilitating, and studying such “transformative spaces.” However, a coherent overview or synthesis that compares these different methods is currently lacking. Therefore, this article reviews four approaches to transformative spaces from the field of sustainability transitions research: transition arenas, living labs, transformative spaces for social-ecological systems (SESs), and mission arenas. Despite some notable differences, we find a large conceptual overlap between these four approaches. Furthermore, our analysis shows that it is important to critically examine the actors, activities, time and place, and goals and mechanisms of change of transformative spaces to gain further insight into their transformative potential. We suggest that this article can serve as a starting point for further exchange and collaboration between sustainability scholars who study and use these different approaches and will allow them to further learn from and build on each other’s research. Future research could further unpack (1) how transformative spaces can offer potential for accelerating dynamics of both buildup and breakdown in sustainability transitions and (2) how transformative spaces can engage with tensions around politics, power dynamics, and conflict.