The Challenge of Sustainable Urban Development and Transforming Cities

Our quickly changing world faces great challenges when it comes to the sustainable provision of energy, food, shelter, water and welfare to a growing urban population. These grand challenges are increasingly taken up by cities that become the places where sustainable futures are emerging. This chapter introduces the theoretical and practical transition perspective taken in this book and describes its structure and outline. It frames the dynamics in urban development from the perspective of sustainability transitions: deep systemic transformations that are the result of destabilising unsustainable ‘regimes’ and emerging sustainable ‘niches,’ driven by transformative agencies and networks. This perspective highlights on the one hand the complexities, uncertainties, and resistance that come along with urban transitions as well as the mechanisms and patterns that enable and accelerate them, and provides the basis for new types of governance. We then describe the structure of the book. It first elaborates upon the theoretical ideas and governance approaches related to sustainability transitions. It then draws upon empirical evidence from applied transition management in European and Japanese cities. In the final part of the book, the authors reflect upon these experiences, to what extent they are comparative, and what can be learnt in general with regard to implementing urban transition strategies.