Urban Sustainability Transitions as Spaces for Experiential Learning

Today, towns and cities, all over the world, are engaged in so-called 'sustainability transitions' and develop projects and activities to move towards more social justice and sustainable development (Evans 2005). Loorbach (2009) defines urban sustainability transitions as long-term structural transformation processes in complex urban socio-technical systems. Because there are no suited institutions available with the power to provide a solution, a way out of unsustainability is often sought in ambiguous 'urban governance' networks (Block and Paredis 2013), in 'new political spaces' that emerge in an 'institutional void': 'there are no generally accepted rules and norms according to which policy making and politics is to be conducted' (Hajer 2003: 175). Facing the impotence of existing decision-making institutions to realise adequate sustainability transitions, appeals have been made to 'learning' as a leverage to decisive action. We want to explore and understand how new political spaces, emerging in the context of urban sustainability initiatives and characterised by institutional voids, can also function as 'educative spaces'. Indeed, sustainability transitions are often framed as a matter of 'learning by doing' and 'doing by learning' (Loorbach 2007), i.e. as an outcome of experiential and experimental learning. Yet, as Dewey (1938/2015: 25) argues, 'experience and experiment are not self-explanatory ideas'. Their meaning and educative value should be explored theoretically as well as empirically. Questions emerging then are, e.g.: Under which conditions do such settings serve as a space where people learn to find ways to open-up new possibilities for a sustainable future? Under which conditions can an institutional void give rise to spaces that can be considered 'educative' instead of 'non-educative' or even 'mis-educative'? Which kind of experiences can be regarded educative in the face of unstructured, wicked sustainability problems? Etc. In this contribution, we draw on Dewey's (1938/2015) theory of experience, framed by the principles of continuity and transaction, to develop a conceptual framework for understanding urban sustainability transition initiatives as spaces for experiential learning. The aim is to theoretically define design parameters (regarding content, method, material equipment, social organisation, etc.) for adequate practice which will be empirically tested in confrontation with what actually happens in urban sustainability transition initiatives.

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