Places and Spaces of Sustainability Transitions: Geographical Contributions to an Emerging Research and Policy Field

Abstract

In recent years, governments across the globe have developed plans for a Green New Deal to curb a combined economic and ecological crisis. Broad societal and industrial transformations should lead to more sustainable modes of production and consumption. These so-called sustainability transitions have become one of the grand challenges, and a major source of opportunity, for developed, emerging and developing economies in the twenty-first century. In academia, a corresponding literature dealing with conditions for sustainability transitions has attracted a lot of attention as a burgeoning field of research geared to analysing co-evolution of new technologies, changes in markets, user practices, policy and cultural discourses, and governing institutions in a systemic perspective.