Special Session: Rethinking just sustainability transitions in regions and cities

Description

In the face of the unfolding ‘poly-crisis’- combining climate crisis, energy crisis, deepening economic difficulties and growing inequalities between social groups and territories, and the crisis of trust in democracy - there is an urgency to rethink the approach to promoting sustainability transitions in cities and regions through place-based policies. The burden of the transition away from fossil fuel and energy-intensive industries is particularly heavy in regions that rely on mining and heavy industry. Many of those areas are peripheral, depopulating, or have already been ‘left behind’ and neglected by policymakers, which risks exacerbating regional disparities. Sustainability transition policies, thus, should pay special attention to those structurally weak regions. These policies also have to be more inclusive to listen to the voices of the communities that may be the most negatively affected by these shifts or that were largely absent in the debate on more sustainable regional futures. Place-based sustainability transition policies, whether they are promoted by the European Union (Just Transition Fund), national, regional, or local governments, should leave no one behind to avoid a major backlash against the urgent measures needed to mitigate and adapt to climate change the burdens of which are unevenly distributed across space and social groups.
Against this background, we propose a special session to explore the challenges of just sustainability transitions in regions and cities. The session is organised under the banner of two Horizon Europe research projects exploring to topic of participation in place-based just sustainability transitions – DUST and BOLSTER. The session includes contributions from among the researchers working on those projects and other researchers investigating place-based sustainability transition policies and citizen participation therein. Papers were presented in three sub-sessions:
SS45 I - Exploring the Patterns of Participation in Place-based Sustainability Transition Policies
SS45 II - Place-based Just Sustainability Transition in Aaction: Intruments, Policy Measures, Approaches
SS45 III - Spatial Justice and Place-based Approaches in Sustainability Policies

Period	13 Jun 2024 → 14 Jun 2024
Event title	2024 RSA Annual Conference: Global Challenges, Regional Collaboration and the Role of Places
Event type	Conference
Location	Florence, ItalyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International