Place and Scale in Sustainability Transitions

In today’s world of increasing spatial inequalities, geopolitical tensions and global shifts in value chains, having a solid grasp of the spatial and multi-scalar dynamics that condition transition dynamics is of ever more importance. Initial theories of sustainability transitions have been criticized for being insufficiently equipped to assess the benefits, conflicts and unevenness that are constituted by the territorial contexts in which transitions dynamics and pathways unfold. Questions how sustainability transitions emerge across places and scales were largely off the radar. Interest and engagement with geographical dimensions of sustainability transitions grew however quickly into a prominent sub-field, characterized by a fruitful trading zone populated by geographers, transition scholars and other social scientists seeking to better account for place specificity, multi-scalarity, and spatial unevenness. This chapter outlines the contours of the Geography of Sustainability Transitions (GeoST) wider theoretical research agenda and ongoing debates, framing these specifically around conceptualizations of place and scale.