Designing radical transitions: a plea for a new governance culture to empower deep transformative change

Abstract

This explorative paper introduces the idea of radical transitions as a necessary starting point for policy and governance. The urgency to achieve transformative change facing climate change and biodiversity loss is now broadly shared, but the dominant policy and market logics of innovation, optimization and risk management persist. In for example the urban mobility transition, we do see a technological shift towards electric mobility but not automatically a deeper cultural, spatial and behavioral shift towards cities in which as less vehicles and space are used to provide as much and as affordable mobility to all. We see a similar pattern in the built environment and food systems: the logics of policy and markets dictate optimization through (technological) innovation, while already for decades more radical alternatives have been developing and maturing locally worldwide. In this paper we explore how the basic principles and approach of transition management can be enriched with insights and methods from design to help institutionalize and mainstream the more radical alternatives.