How green socio-technical configurations travel: The translation of innovative sanitation solutions between European city regions

Keywords: Geography of transitions, green path development, configurational template, translation, urban water management
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

The Geography of Sustainability Transitions literature shows important gaps when it comes to explaining how 'green' socio-technical configurations travel across geographical contexts and between core and peripheral regions. Innovation processes take place in spatially dispersed but interconnected global innovation systems (GIS) and 'green' solutions are increasingly transposed across local contexts. In this context, we argue that a potentially impactful transition dynamic is overlooked in the current literature: the process through which ‘configurational templates’ are diffused and ‘translated’ between spatial contexts and especially between core and peripheral regions. Put simply, this paper targets the question of how a configuration that has been shown “to work” in one geographical context is translated to fit with, and reflect, place-specific conditions in another context. To answer this question, we develop a conceptual framework drawing on insights from economic geography, transition studies and organizational institutionalism. We conceptualize the translation of configurational templates as a territorially anchored institutionalization process developing through stages characterized by different translation modes and mechanisms. The conceptual framework is applied to a case study of the sanitation sector in Helsingborg, Sweden. We analyze in depth how a highly innovative sanitation and resource recovery system was translated from Hamburg and adapted to a major urban development project (H+), resulting in a new green development path based on a template available elsewhere in the GIS. The results have substantive implications for explaining regional variation in the adoption of environmental innovations and the prospects of peripheral regions in developing new green paths.