Sustainable urban regime adjustments

The endogenous agency that urban governments increasingly portray by making conscious and planned efforts to adjust the regimes they operate within is currently not well captured in transition studies. There is a need to acknowledge the ambiguity of regime enactment at the urban scale. This directs attention to the transformative implications of conscious strategic maneuvering by incumbent regime actors, when confronting regime structurations. This article provides insight to processes of regime enactment performed by local governments by applying a flow-oriented perspective on regime dynamics, inspired by Actor-Network Theory to demonstrate that regime incumbent actors can induce gradual regime adjustments at the urban scale. This is done through a case study of an urban development project, where the Municipality of Egedal in Denmark has successfully promoted energy efficient buildings through adjustments in existing planning and building procedures.

► A case study of sustainable regime adjustments at the urban scale. ► Conceptualizing regimes as coordinated flows of associations enacted by incumbent regime actors. ► Showing that regime ambiguities can strategically be explored by incumbent regime actors. ► Strengthening the role of local governments in socio-technical transitions.