TY - JOUR
T1 - Success factors and strategies for sustainability transitions of small-scale communities - Evidence from a cross-case analysis
AU - Forrest, Nigel
AU - Wiek, Arnim
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank the members of the communities of Ashton Hayes, BedZED, Forres, and the Isle of Eigg, who participated in the four case studies and provided valuable information and insights. Nigel Forrest is grateful for a travel grant from the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University and for support from the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives Fellowship. We also would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
Funding Information:
The Forres transition initiative began in 2008 after its three founders, who met through the Findhorn Foundation, decided to apply the Transition Town concept in Forres. Its goal closely aligns with the movement's goal of building “local resilience in the face of the potentially damaging effects of Peak Oil and Climate Change” ( Piper and Villani, 2009 ). The initiative generally follows the Transition Town approach ( Hopkins, 2008 ). Transition Town Forres (TTF) is incorporated as charitable company and has a formal organizational structure comprising a board of directors, a management committee, and multiple project teams. A three-year plan (2009–2012) sets out the initiative's objectives. There is a strong emphasis on professional, business-like management where, as a leading member put it, core management members are asked to “both put the spade in the ground and …to write up minutes from meetings”. Although responsibility for projects is delegated to workgroups led by a project manager, they are accountable to the management committee for decision making, reporting progress, and justifying budget requests. TTF is primarily funded through grants including £184,000 from the Scottish Government in 2008. TTF depends heavily on volunteers and has cultivated strong, mutually supportive links with other community groups but has also used funding for staffing and consultancy.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/12/1
Y1 - 2015/12/1
N2 - Initiatives pursuing sustainability transitions of small-scale communities offer rich learning opportunities on: to what extent they are making progress toward sustainability; what success depends on; and how success can be replicated in other communities. Yet, there is little empirical research addressing these questions. This article presents a cross-case analysis of sustainability transition initiatives in four small U.K. communities that tentatively identifies factors influencing transition outcomes as well as strategies to improve transition effectiveness. Our findings suggest a wide range of factors to be important including socio-demographics, community governance, community capacity, organization and management, resources, and mobilization. The article demonstrates how empirical studies of this nature can successively build a broad knowledge base to support effective community transition practices.
AB - Initiatives pursuing sustainability transitions of small-scale communities offer rich learning opportunities on: to what extent they are making progress toward sustainability; what success depends on; and how success can be replicated in other communities. Yet, there is little empirical research addressing these questions. This article presents a cross-case analysis of sustainability transition initiatives in four small U.K. communities that tentatively identifies factors influencing transition outcomes as well as strategies to improve transition effectiveness. Our findings suggest a wide range of factors to be important including socio-demographics, community governance, community capacity, organization and management, resources, and mobilization. The article demonstrates how empirical studies of this nature can successively build a broad knowledge base to support effective community transition practices.
KW - Case studies
KW - Community based initiatives
KW - Success factors
KW - Sustainability appraisal
KW - Sustainability transitions
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U2 - 10.1016/j.eist.2015.05.005
DO - 10.1016/j.eist.2015.05.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84953836507
VL - 17
SP - 22
EP - 40
JO - Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
JF - Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
SN - 2210-4224
ER -