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Accepted Paper:

Exploring Knowledge Practices in Sustainable Urban Development  
Lucía Liste (Norwegian Uni. of Science and Technology) Lina Ingeborgrud (Norwegian Uni. of Science and Technology)

Paper short abstract:

What kinds of knowledge do cities need to deal with climate change? How is that knowledge collected, produced and shared? This article explores knowledge-practices involved in sustainable urban development in Norway. Our findings show three main practices: pilot projects, stories and site inspections.

Paper long abstract:

The last UN Climate Change Conference in December 2015 reaffirmed cities as key intervention sites to respond to the pressing challenge of climate change. Yet, in order to carry their sustainable transitions, municipalities need to secure, among others, their access to different types of knowledge and expertise. What kinds of knowledge do cities need to enact their pathways? How is knowledge collected, produced, codified, and shared? This article addresses these questions by examining how municipalities in Norway are carrying on their own transitions towards more sustainable forms of city.

In concrete, drawing on a sociomaterial approach, this paper explores knowledge practices and strategies involved in Cities of the Future (CoF), a knowledge-intensive and innovative program running from 2008 to 2014, which aimed to foster comprehensive collaboration for the development of urban areas with the lowest possible levels of greenhouse gas emissions and the improvement of physical urban environments. The study has been conducted through a combination a qualitative content analysis of relevant documents, 20 semi-structured interviews with participants in CoF, two weeks shadowing/observation in two municipal transportation planning agencies, and a workshop with relevant stakeholders.

We aim to contribute to the session by proposing a new notion to account for knowledge practices in environmental work, namely, translocality; as well as providing empirical descriptions of the set of knowledge practices through which sustainable urban development is performed, i.e: pilot projects, stories and site inspections. Our findings suggest that working towards more sustainable cities requires not only a diversity of knowledge types but of knowledge sites.

Panel P09
Knowing the atmosphere: exploring conceptual and practical dimensions of weather and climate knowledge for environmental decision-making
  Session 1