Introduction to Rescaling Sustainability Transitions

Abstract

Sustainability transitions are employed as a key conceptual term in science, politics and societal debate. While often employed as an umbrella term for policy programmes aiming for a more environmentally and socially conscious shift of societal conduct, the understanding of its variegated processes has sparked an array of epistemological frameworks and approaches. Much research is criticised for an insensitivity to the socio-spatial complexities and multi-scalar relations of becoming, and the domination of large-scale, centralised and urban-oriented socio-economic development pathways calls for a rescaling of sustainability transitions with small-scale, localised and rural approaches. The rescaling of sustainability transitions in this sense plays out in multiple forms and rather than confining research to a streamlined conceptual frame, we see value in drawing on partially aligned, yet diverse accounts. Through engagement with different shades of rescaling, this book aims at a deeper, more diverse understanding of how sustainability transitions manifest in different spatial contexts, are framed by multi-scalar and continuously shifting socio-spatial relations and the role of (contested) spatial imaginaries on the capacities for ‘rescaled’ future trajectories.