City-Level Decoupling-Full Report

City-Level Decoupling: Urban resource flows and the governance of infrastructure transitions

'Socio-technical niches' operate at a micro level in 'protected' spaces that usually encompass small networks of actors learning about new and novel technologies and their uses. These networks mobilize to add new technologies to the agenda, promoting innovations and novel technological developments. 111 In working through these issues, Smith and colleagues characterise four types of transition (see Figure 6.1) as a means of stimulating regime changes. 1. 'Endogenous renewal' is characterised by highly co-ordinated responses of incumbent regime actors to perceived pressures on the regime, drawing upon resources from within the regime and changing it incrementally.

under situations in which pressures are poorly articulated and responses uncoordinated...” 112 .

3. 'Emergent transformations' occur through uncoordinated pressures for change and responses external to the incumbent regime. From a governance perspective, “... an emergent transition corresponds in an analytical sense to situations where poorly articulated selection pressures meet with uncoordinated responses...” 113 . 4. 'Purposive transitions' show a strong degree of intention in pursuing regime transition, and involve coordinating actors and resources largely from outside the regime. This type has significant internal capacity to manage change, drawing on new ideas from external learning networks. Although these models of the four main regime-change modes make sense at a general level, they cannot be easily applied to a city because a 'city' cannot be equated to a 'regime'. Instead, a city is a space where a

2. A 're-orientation of trajectories' refers to regimes which encounter radical re-

orientation, either from inside or outside the regime, through what they term a ’shock' or a radical shift “...where governance focuses on internal regime functions,

Figure 6.1 Transition contexts as a function of degree of coordination to selection pressures and the locus of asaptive ressources 114

Y axis = Resources Locus

Internal

Creation of new knowledge

Influencing search direction

Supply of resources

Reorientation of trajectors

Endogenous renewal

Creation of positive external economy Formation of markets

X axis = Steering of adaptive response

Low co-ordination

High co-ordination

Regime membership

Distribution of resources

Interdependency of regime members Coherence/flexibility of vision Economic - legal conditions

Emergent transformation

Purposive transition

External

Source: Smith et. al.

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