Urban neighborhoods – the locus of change. What can we learn from the transition story of Augustenborg?

Cities, and more importantly urban neighborhoods, are key sites of infrastructure provision with direct links to social and environmental concerns. They are increasingly seen as sites of strategic action in transitions toward sustainability and resilience, and offer big opportunities for fundamental societal change. The framing of neighborhood-level problems and their solutions, governance processes for managing problems and implementing solutions, and learning processes for evolving new ways of thinking and doing are of special interest for urban socio-techno-ecological transitions. In this context, the over 70-year story of Augustenborg offers invaluable lessons stemming from a continuous search for well-being and enhanced living environments supported by global agendas and local visions, materializing in sustainable solutions which have brought together a multitude of actors experimenting with new ways of thinking and organizing themselves. In this book chapter, we reveal underlying processes of change by analyzing three key aspects of urban transitions: framing, governing and learning. (Less)