Can low carbon city experiments transform the development regime?

The paper explores the ability of urban transition experiments to transform the development regime in which they are embedded. Using three European case studies - BedZed, Vauban and Hammarby - it investigates the processes of broadening and scaling-up within cities, nations and across cities globally; and finds that transition experiments do influence the development regime in which they are embedded. The impact of experiments on the development regime does vary significantly with scale. The innovative components, which are assembled in experiments (cultural, structural and practices) also seem to have differing propensity to influence the development regime at different scales. Thus, cultural innovations have a greater propensity to influence the development regime across all scales, whilst the structural and practice innovations tend to influence the development regime locally and nationally. The case studies also demonstrated the significance of context (historical and geographical) in shaping experiments and influencing the transformation process. This finding suggests that the importance of broadening in the transformation process has been overstated. The experiments show that broadening across national boundaries and for prolonged periods, can result in expanding niche-regimes which become increasingly diverse. But it does not result in transformation.