Elif Erdoǧan Öztekin and Elisa Lähde
Despite the necessity and urgency of sustainability actions, urban sustainability transformations are practised only to a limited extent. This study argues that methodology and methods are crucial for advancing and deepening sustainability transformations in cities, and that methodological innovations are necessary in several sectors, especially in urban planning and governance. Towards this target, this article presents an urban experimentation undertaken in the Laajasalo neighbourhood of Helsinki City (Finland), where the use and transformative potential of design-based co-creation methods and methodologies were tested through a series of multi-stakeholder workshops. The workshops tackled the transformations of local social-ecological systems with residents and city planners, convening them in collaborative, systemic, embodied, creative and empathetic thinking.
The results indicate that the applied design methods facilitated capacity building for urban sustainability transformations by contributing to the re-connection of urban societies with ecological systems and the re-structuring of incumbent planning processes and practices. The workshops enabled co-learning between residents and planners, fostered collaborative dialogues, and stimulated discussions on nature values, multispecies wellbeing, and speculative nature futures. The findings suggest methodological shifts can foster the complexity framing of urban planning practice and contribute to delivering ecoliterate and collective responses to pressing urban challenges, integrating systems, futures and multispecies thinking. Furthermore, the findings address the need to expand the roles of local governments from urban planning authorities to transformation leaders that infrastructure societal change by facilitating co-creation as a capacity-building and co-learning process.
Keywords: Co-creation, methodological innovation, urban sustainability transformations, urban planning, design, transition design, social-ecological systems, leverage points