[CET Lunch] Rethinking Acceleration: Multiple Temporalities of Urban Climate Transformations

There is a widespread assumption in scholarship that acceleration of sustainability transitions is desirable and necessary. The purpose of TEMPO is to challenge this assumption by investigating the multiple temporalities – including slowness – that contribute to transitions and transformations towards sustainability, particularly for urban climate change. Although there is an urgent and justified need to reduce emissions, the myopic emphasis on acceleration has several problems that have become more evident in recent years: accelerated change can create political uncertainty and resistance in places and social groups left behind,undermine democratic processes, exacerbate technological risks, increase land use and resource consumption, and create socio-cultural alienation. The key idea of TEMPO is that deep, lasting sustainable transformations are not achieved solely through acceleration, but through the synchronisation of slow, gradual and fast processes of change. The empirical focus of the project centres on sustainable mobility transformations (particularly cycling) in cities – which involve short-term policy options as well as slow-paced processes of infrastructural change. 

About the speaker

Håvard Haarstad is a Professor of Human Geography and Director of the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET). His research focuses on how to make urban life sustainable. How can we reduce emissions and, at the same time, generate social equity, democracy and quality of life?