Understanding transformative capacity to boost urban climate adaptation: A Semi-Systematic Literature Review

Transformative capacity (TC) is key for addressing climate change impacts. It refers to urban areas’ ability for profound and intentional change to address current challenges and move towards a more desirable and resilient state. However, its varied applications across disciplines can lead to misunderstandings and implementation challenges. Thus, this Semi-Systematic Literature Review (SSLR) on TC within urban studies from 2016 to 2022 aims to overview and synthesise TC literature and its gaps to inform ongoing debates, intersecting it with climate-related research. The results show an increasing interest in TC within two fields of knowledge: resilience studies and transformative research. The review found TC as a catalyst for transformative actions, promoting sustainable pathways, enhancing resilience, and driving fundamental changes in urban climate adaptation. Finally, the prevailing literature gaps concern the TC concept’s fragmentation, excessive research on governance features, and lack of joint research about TC and innovation. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-023-01940-2.


APPENDIX S2
Table S2.Definitions of transformative capacity within resilience studies.

Transformative capacity is…
The capacity needed for transformative change, which represented shifts in perceptions and meanings.

Masterson et al. (2017, p. 5)
A time framed dimension of 'unintended' or 'deliberate' change embracing the first three dimensions toward a general improvement of resilience.Bottazzi et al. (2018, p. 4) Understood as an ability to address more fundamental drivers of risk by deeply altering the system's key functions, i.e., the ability to introduce more fundamental changes to the functioning of a system.Mochizuki et al. (2018, p. 363) The potential of a social-ecological system to shift to a different, but still productive and socially desirable, regime that is again resilient to disturbance.Garmestani et al. (2019, p. 19899) The distinction between adaptation and transformation depends on the degree of change, with transformation becoming clearer when the system is fundamentally changed or dismantled to create a new system.et al. (2019, p. 6) Characterized by positive intentional changes or improvements introduced by the community itself to reduce future risk and vulnerability.Hasan and Kadir (2020, p. 2)

Manyena
The system's ability to make changes for better conditions, being an important factor for assessing the effectiveness and role of governance systems in it.Subiyanto et al. (2020, pp. 5, 6) The ability of systems to recreate themselves as a whole.Bouwer et al. (2021, p. 3) The system's ability to fundamentally shift into a new regime, or a 'new normal '. Fallon et al. (2022, p. 3) The capacity that supports transformative strategies that facilitate 'adjusting to the new impacts of climate change', and 'creating a new system' when the existing system is untenable or undesirable.Mehryar et al. (2022, p. 3) The ability of a system to initiate social transformation that moves away from untenable trajectories, toward desired ecosystem states and values.Muchiri and Opiyo (2022, p. 3) The capability of cities and regions to transform through learning, self-organization, and exploring new ways along with flexibility and considerable changes in existing structure.Moghadas et al. (2022, p. 3) The ability to implement changes to stop or reduce the causes of risk and vulnerability and ensure an equitable risk-sharing condition.Zeng et al. (2022, p. 15) Table S3.Definitions of transformative capacity within transformative research.

Transformative capacity is…
The capacity of individuals and organisations to be able to both transform themselves and their society in a deliberate, conscious way.This includes the capacity to imagine, enact, and sustain a transformed world and a way of life that is in balance with the carrying capacity of our earth, and where all life flourishes.2019)) The ability to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social (including political) conditions make the existing system untenable The capacity to effectively empower actors individually and collectively for effectuating systemic change, considering the diverse forms of institutions, resources, skills, and interactions required to do so.Wolfram et al. (2016, p. 22) The collective ability of the stakeholders involved in urban development to conceive of, prepare for, initiate, and perform path-deviant change towards sustainability within and across multiple complex systems that constitute the cities they relate to.It is a qualitative measure for an emergent property that reflects attributes of urban stakeholders, their interactions, and the context they are embedded in.
Wolfram A measurement of the ability of urban actors, institutions, and artefacts to both plan for and carry out such transitions within and across the various systems which comprise our cities.

Nordström
and Wales (2019, p. 507) What enables actors and organizations to initialize, facilitate, implement, or contribute to transformations towards sustainability.Keeler et al. (2019, p. 530) (Keeler et al. (2022)) Defined as a system's capacity to cross thresholds into new development trajectories or to create a fundamentally new system.Brodnik and Brown (2018, p. 149) Table S3.(continued)

Concept
Definitions Authors

Transformative Capacity is…
The ability of a governance system first to adapt to changes, and if needed, to carry out fundamental changes in a specific system as a response to current or anticipated changes in the social or natural environment.et al. (2019, pp. 303, 304) A relational political process which implies analysing ethical practices and repertoires as well as the connection of these practices to broader processes of change.Related to institutional and organizational learning, which occur incrementally, most of the time, and which allow the policy itself to be changed.Sátyro and Cunha (2018, p. 366) The ability to anticipate and plan for change in the context of slow burn pressures such as population growth and climate change as well as to disturbances associated with extreme events, where adaptive capacity tends to be the more critical focus.Newton et al. (2017, p. 9) The scope of societal change that partnerships can achieve.

Räsänen
van Tulder and Keen (2018, p. 318) The abilities of actors to create novelties (for doing, thinking, organising) that contribute to sustainability and resilience and to embed them in structures, practices, and discourses.
Hölscher, Frantzeskaki and Loorbach (2019, p. 798); Hölscher, Frantzeskaki, McPhearson, et al. (2019, p. 189) The collective ability of actors to realize changes in the urban environment in the long run.(2021, p. 3) The capacity for individuals to suspend assumptions, critique their mental models and potentially adopt new paradigms, influencing sustainability outcomes.Ives et al. (2020, p. 211) The ability to fundamentally alter a social-ecological system once the current conditions become untenable or undesirable and hence contested, requiring transformative agency.Horlings et al. (2020, p. 356) Table S3.(continued)

Concept
Definitions Authors

Transformative capacity is…
The system's ability to make small acts of change across sites and scales.Risien (2019, p. 78) A result from the interaction between the partially shared understandings within and between sites and across scales of the learning a network.et al. (2017, p. 542) Is a social phenomenon that results from structures working on agents and agents working on structures, which reinforces its dependence on the working concert between top-down (structural) and bottom-up (agentic) causes.Risien and Goldstein (2021, p. 540) The ability to turn transformative potential into transformative impact.The ability to organize action and to 'reconfigure and move towards a new and more sustainable state', [encompassing the] ability to 'actively disrupt and dismantle existing systems, and simultaneously create and build up viable alternatives'.Witzell et al. (2022, p. 721)