Governing Sustainable Futures (GSF): Advancing the use of Participatory Mechanisms for addressing Place-based Contestations of Sustainable Living
Delivering sustainability transitions across the UK necessarily entails changes in how we live and work. The changes associated with sustainability transitions can be perceived in terms of winners and losers, and often act as focus of disagreement. For example the recent controversy about ‘15-minute cities’.
These ‘flashpoints’ are relevant not only to the places in which they emerge, but also for debate and policy action on delivering sustainable places nationally. They raise important issues about how common sustainability transitions are governed.
Accordingly, we need to understand what makes for a flashpoint issue on sustainable living, how such issues emerge, how they are framed and how we can work with communities to overcome them.
The GSF team will work with local agencies in Devon and across the UK to investigate ‘flashpoints’ and to make recommendations for national policy and practice. Their ultimate aim will be to find sustainable outcomes that are fair, inclusive and effective.
This is an Economic and Social Research Council (ERSC) funded project. More information about the project is available on the UKRI website.
Project team
Rebecca Jane Sandover (Principal Investigator)
Alice Moseley (Co-Investigator)
Patrick Devine-Wright (Co-Investigator)
Karen Bickerstaff (Co-Investigator)
Stewart Barr (Co-Investigator)
Nick Kirsop-Taylor (Co-Investigator)
