12/4/2023 0 Comments A bumpy road to action researchTheir influence on urban planning as well as their vast experience in place-based environmental problem-solving and mediation with other stakeholders (Bulkeley and Betsill 2005) makes them key collaboration partners for transdisciplinary sustainability research (see Wiek et al. In this context, municipalities are seen as key actors (Roberts 2008 SALA 2016a Statskontoret 2016). Transformation, here, refers to a deliberate (while not fully steerable) process of structural change in a normative direction (Feola 2014). 2012).Īccordingly, transdisciplinary research, collaboration, and learning are seen as crucial for achieving urban transformation towards sustainability (McCormick et al. Closely related to concepts such as participatory action research (Glassman and Erdem 2014 Streck 2014) and post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993), it is argued that transdisciplinarity is necessary for effective science and societal change as it can help uncover underlying assumptions in research and practice, and develop methodologies for working with uncertainties and disputed values (Jahn et al. Although there are diverging interpretations of transdisciplinarity (e.g., Max-Neef 2005), most advocates agree that it is characterised by: (1) complex societal problems (often involving multiple interests and interacting challenges) (2) collaboration between and among scientific disciplines and societal actors and (3) processes of mutual learning between science and society for joint problem-solving (Brandt et al. 2012) such as biodiversity loss, pollution and climate-related hazards. Transdisciplinarity is promoted as a solution-oriented research approach for addressing complex sustainability challenges (Brandt et al. We propose additional guiding questions to address shortcomings and inspire reflexivity in transdisciplinary projects. In this context, we found that design principles for transdisciplinarity have the potential to (4) mitigate project shortcomings, even when transdisciplinarity is not an explicit aim, and (5) address differences and allow new voices to be heard. We show that: (1) selecting the number and type of project stakeholders requires more explicit consideration of the purpose of societal actors’ participation (2) concrete, interim benefits for participating practitioners and organisations need to be continuously discussed (3) promoting the ‘inter’, i.e., interdisciplinary and inter-city learning, can support transdisciplinarity and, ultimately, urban sustainability and long-term change. We apply a set of design principles and guiding questions for transdisciplinary sustainability projects and, on this basis, identify key aspects for supporting university–municipality collaboration. This paper presents a self-assessment of a joint research project on ecosystem services and climate adaptation planning (ECOSIMP) undertaken by four universities and seven Swedish municipalities. In this context, city governments’ engagement in transdisciplinarity is generally seen as a key condition for societal transformation towards sustainability. Transdisciplinary research and collaboration is widely acknowledged as a critical success factor for solution-oriented approaches that can tackle complex sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate-related hazards.
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