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Building actor-centric transformative capacity through city-university partnerships

  • Urban Transformative Capacity
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Abstract

Cities worldwide are rising to the challenge of sustainable development, calling for large-scale and fast-paced transformations towards sustainability. Urban sustainability challenges are now being reframed as a lack of capacity of individuals and organizations to carry out such socio-technical transformations. This article expands on transformative capacity literature by elucidating the concept of actor-centric transformative capacity. It focuses on the unique role city-university partnerships (CUPs) can play in catalyzing and supporting effective urban sustainability transformations. Two case studies on CUPs in Portland, Oregon and Tempe, Arizona are used to identify determinants of actor-centric transformative capacity, their role in the transformative capacity of urban systems, and how they are built through CUPs. The article concludes with strategies for building effective CUPs capable of building actor-centric transformative capacity among university actors and city administrators.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the guest editors Marc Wolfram, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea, Megan Farrelly, Monash University, Australia, and Sara Borgström, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, for the invitation and encouragement to pursue this manuscript. The authors acknowledge funding from the Global Consortium for Sustainability Outcomes (GCSO) during the grant period February 2017–January 2018. We would also like to thank our city collaborators in Portland, Karlsruhe, Tempe, and Mexico City for the productive collaborations through this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Lauren Withycombe Keeler

  2. Center for Global Sustainability and Cultural Transformation, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany

    Lauren Withycombe Keeler, Arnim Wiek, Daniel J. Lang & Nigel Forrest

  3. Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    Fletcher Beaudoin

  4. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Lauren Withycombe Keeler, Arnim Wiek, Daniel J. Lang & Nigel Forrest

  5. Institute for Ethics and Transdisciplinary Sustainability Research, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany

    Beatrice John, Daniel J. Lang & Nigel Forrest

  6. Laboratoria Nacional de Ciencias de la Sostenibilidad, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, Mexico

    Amy M. Lerner

  7. Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Richard Beecroft, Kaidi Tamm & Andreas Seebacher

  8. Office of Sustainability, City of Tempe, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Braden Kay

  9. School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Arnim Wiek & Nigel Forrest

Authors
  1. Lauren Withycombe Keeler
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  2. Fletcher Beaudoin
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  3. Arnim Wiek
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  4. Beatrice John
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  5. Amy M. Lerner
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  6. Richard Beecroft
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  7. Kaidi Tamm
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  8. Andreas Seebacher
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  9. Daniel J. Lang
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  10. Braden Kay
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  11. Nigel Forrest
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arnim Wiek.

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Keeler, L.W., Beaudoin, F., Wiek, A. et al. Building actor-centric transformative capacity through city-university partnerships. Ambio 48, 529–538 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-018-1117-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-018-1117-9

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