THE ABILITY OF A CITY TO SUCCESSFULLY HOST SUSTAINABILITY EXPERIMENTS; What regional context factors affect the success of a sustainability experiment?

Abstract

There is an increasing need for successful sustainability experiments, in order to support the current societal sustainability transition. However, it is shown that there is a geographically uneven distribution of cities in their ability to host successful sustainability experiments. This paper aims to systematically explain the geographical uneven distribution of successful sustainability experiments. In order to decrease inequality and build a useable framework for governments to increase their ability to host successful sustainability experiments. Current literature from the Transition field and the Evolutionary Economical Geography field show a gap in explaining the regional influences on societal transitions. Based on this knowledge gap the following research question is formulated: ‘In what way can the difference between cities in their ability to host successful sustainability experiments be explained by their regional characteristics?’. In order to answer the research question, a data-driven quantitative research is performed, with Nature-Based Solution (NBS) initiatives as sustainability experiments. NBS initiatives are defined as nature-based initiatives helping to decrease the influence of climate change upon urban areas. NBS initiatives are a heterogeneous set of sustainability experiments. Furthermore, NBS initiatives within 99 European cities are mapped within a public dataset (Almassy et al., 2018). This research combines the data for 35 regional context factors within these 99 European cities to test their influence on the transferability of different NBS groups. The regional context factors are grouped within Culture, Regional network, Learning culture, Demographic information or General context factors. Expanding current literature on favourable experimental habitats for different types of sustainability experiments (Van den Heiligenberg et al., 2017). Results show the possibility of grouping sustainability experiments on their experiment characteristics and forming contrasting sets of favourable regional context factors for each experiment type. This in combination with the result of a generic set of favourable regional context factors influencing the transferability of all experiment types. Stating the importance of regional diversity with explaining the geographical uneven distribution of successful sustainability experiments. This thesis adds critical insights and systematic results to the existing qualitative built habitat framework. Adding a systematic performed quantitative research and the influence of a generic set of favourable regional context factors. However, it is stated that future research is necessary with a larger sample, different sustainability experiments and different demographic areas.