Transferring Sustainability Solutions across Contexts through City–University Partnerships

Authors

Lauren Withycombe Keeler, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State UniversityFollow
Fletcher Beaudoin, Portland State UniversityFollow
Amy M. Lerner, Laboratorio Nacional de Ciencias de la Sostenibilidad, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de MéxicoFollow
Beatrice John, Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University of LüneburgFollow
Richard Beecroft, Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University of LüneburgFollow
Kaidi Tamm, Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe Institute of TechnologyFollow
Arnim Wiek, Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University of LüneburgFollow
Daniel J. Lang, Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University of LüneburgFollow

Published In

Sustainability

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Subjects

Sustainability -- cities

Abstract

The urgency of climate change and other sustainability challenges makes transferring and scaling solutions between cities a necessity. However, solutions are deeply contextual. To accelerate solution efforts, there is a need to understand how context shapes the development of solutions. Universities are well positioned to work with cities on transferring solutions from and to other cities. This paper analyses five case studies of city–university partnerships in three countries on transferring solutions. Our analysis suggests that understanding the interest, the action on sustainability, and the individual and collective sustainability competences on the part of the city administration and the university can help facilitate the transfer of sustainability solutions across contexts. We conclude that the nature of the city–university partnership is essential to solution transfer and that new and existing networks can be used to accelerate progress on the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Description

© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Locate the Document

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10092966

DOI

10.3390/su10092966

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/26270

Citation Details

Withycombe Keeler, L., Beaudoin, F., Lerner, A., John, B., Beecroft, R., Tamm, K., ... & Lang, D. (2018). Transferring Sustainability Solutions across Contexts through City–University Partnerships. Sustainability, 10(9), 2966.