Assessing Change Agency in Urban Experiments for Sustainability Transitions

Abstract: This thesis adresses a lack engagement with the role of agency in the literature on urban sustainability transitions and urban experiments. By introducing the trinity of change agency framework from economic geography a hypothesis of how agentic processes can be conceptualized for urban sustainability transitions is developed. The framework allows to adress the shortcomings of the existing literature which fails to adress why UST take place in specific locations and tend to prescribe specific roles to actors based on their position in socio-technical systems. The hypothesis is tested in a case study of the ElectriCity project in Gothenburg, Sweden, an urban experiment aimed at developing and testing the use of electric busses in order to induce change in the city’s transport system. The case study reveals that processes in urban experiments can be well explained by a combination of place-based leadership, institutional and innovative entrepreneurship. However, actors take ambiguous roles, implying that they can not be pre-ascribed specific types of agency.