School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences

Cities with a car-oriented mobility system are significant consumers of energy and require drastic transformations in their structure and function to minimize their harmful impacts on environment and people and to achieve sustainability goals. To promote such sustainable transformations, municipal administrators need to act as change-agents. Because municipal governments are often not agile organizations, they tend toward incrementalism even in the pursuit of transformational goals. Therefore, there is a need in municipal governments to build individual transformative capacity so that municipal administrators can design, test, and implement plans, projects, and policies that are capable of transforming cities toward sustainability. This research presents a game-based workshop, “Stadt-liche Ziele” (AudaCity), that uses a backcasting approach to make municipal administrators build a sustainability strategy. I conducted a pilot study to test the effects of the game on municipal administrators’ confidence in their own ability and power to implement sustainability actions, a key determinant of transformative capacity. Five municipal administrators from Lüneburg, Germany, working on mobility issues, participated in a three-hour-workshop playing the game. Interviews and questionnaires were used before and after the workshop and participants’ contributions during the event were recorded to explore collective changes in confidence. Results indicate that the game increased participant confidence by rewarding collective success, breaking down an ambitious goal into achievable tasks, and acknowledging how administrators’ current actions already contribute to the goal.

How we divide space in ever growing urban areas in an equitable, efficient and aesthetic fashion is one of the big questions of our time. In Lüneburg, Germany, citizens think more alternative forms of housing will be an important element of a sustainable future (Lüneburg 2030, 2018). Tiny Houses, dwellings that downsize an entire household to its minimum, are currently gaining attention in the country, but legal barriers make their implementation difficult. It has to be decided if legislations should be changed to allow these structures in the housing mix of Lüneburg. It is a difficult task to sift through the glamorization of Tiny Houses past the ideological utopia to see their value for the individual (Ansons, 2015). Therefore, it is of interest to fully understand what Tiny Houses offer for affordable housing stakeholders. Twenty-five evaluations of criticism and praise of the Tiny House Movement are collected by applying Q method, a tool to gather subjective viewpoints (Barry & Proops, 1999). Results indicate, four salient perceptions on that matter. Each viewpoint identifies different opportunities and risks when evaluating Tiny Houses for Lüneburg. This research demonstrates the potential of Tiny Houses to trigger participation by bringing people with diverse backgrounds together.

Often characterized by intense commoditization, heavy ecological footprint, and monopolistic governance mechanisms, the present-day industrialized food system has contributed to a growing distrust among citizens around the world. In response to this, local food initiatives promoting sustainable food and agricultural systems have formed. Little empirical research exists regarding how these local food initiatives think about their experience in relation a relevant conceptual framework. As such, this research entails the development of a conceptual framework based on Schlosberg and Cole’s (2015) sustainable materialist frame and literature regarding how local food initiatives may be characterized. This consists of sustainability values, collective action and political perspectives. Thirteen participants from two local food initiatives in Lüneburg, Germany were interviewed to provide in-depth insights into participant perceptions in relation to the three dimensions. Results indicate that participants exhibit strong values related to sustainability (e.g. knowledge of food origin, environmental concern, etc.), and appreciate the practical, collective work of the initiative. Additionally, a clash was found between initiative goals and participants’ perception of a lack of commitment and strong uniformity in the initiatives. Furthermore, many participants expressed political motivation and even perceived group actions as counter to the mainstream food system, although both initiatives did not identify as a politically motivated. This research sheds light on opportunities and barriers for initiative success and indicates the potential for the developed framework to serve as a lens for understanding other social initiatives aimed toward sustainability transformations.