Webinar: Working with local authorities and communities to foster sustainable cities
Time: 13:00-14:30 UK/14:00-15:30 CET
Mia Hesselgren & Carly McLachlan
Hosted by the Future Earth Knowledge-Action Network on Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production Working Group on Social Change Beyond Consumerism.
Exploring sustainable citizenship with Designerly Living Labs. Mia Hesselgren, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Abstract: Designerly Living Labs can be used to explore possible future concepts as full-scale experiments in people’s everyday lives. This approach engages participants as co-researchers in longitudinal research projects to learn about possibilities for shaping sociotechnical transformations. In the research program Mistra SAMS (Sustainable Accessibility and Mobility Services) a Designerly Living Lab was set up and implemented in 2023 in Riksten, a semi-urban residential area south of Stockholm, Sweden. Future prototypes of shared mobility services were designed and implemented in collaboration with private and public actors. The shared mobility services were introduced to fourteen “co-researchers”, citizens living in the area who wanted to enrol in testing these as part of their everyday travel practices for a year. In the research project, we engaged with these Riksten citizens to learn from their experiences and practices to build knowledge on the challenges of sustainable mobility. With a practice-oriented design focus, Designerly Living Labs are useful to enable, or even provoke, experimentation to let proto-practices emerge over time.
Speaker BIO
Mia Hesselgren is an assistant professor in Industrial Design Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Her research aims to understand how to support and shape sustainability transitions. Her research is transdisciplinary and uses collaborative design methods to engage with other research disciplines, as well as with citizens and stakeholders from the private and public sectors.
Accelerating climate action at the city-region scale: collaborations on embedding climate action with Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Carly McLachlan, University of Manchester
Abstract: As part of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation (CAST), we have been collaborating with Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) on how they can better embed climate across their organisation to accelerate action at the local level. As part of this work, we have co-developed a carbon and co-benefits assessment tool. The motivation for this was to support officers and elected members in taking a broader view beyond their immediate area of interest or responsibility to identify ways to maximise co-benefits and minimise negative impacts. Whilst the tool was very positively received by officers, our interviews also demonstrated the value of close involvement with an organisation at a trialling stage of a climate action intervention – with discussions of the use and usefulness of the tool offering a way in to reflections on the overarching and fundamental challenges faced by authorities in delivering on their publicly stated climate ambitions. In this talk, I will discuss the nature of the collaboration, an overview of the assessment tool, our experience of developing and implementing it and the ongoing challenges and opportunities of genuinely accelerating climate action through sub-national government.
Speaker BIO
Carly McLachlan is Professor of climate and energy policy at the University of Manchester and deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change. Her research interests focus on how stakeholders, including publics and local authorities, engage with sustainability issues and how ‘evidence’ is used within this.
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