Co-evolution toward sustainable development: Neither smart technologies nor heroic choices.

摘要

“Sustainable development” has been a topic of public discourse for over two decades, but despite many efforts to implement this ideal, a breakthrough is not in sight. I maintain that this inefficacy rests not only with the number of activities carried out in the name of sustainability but also with their type. The conventional approaches can be classified into two strands: efforts to develop smart technologies and sociophilic calls for heroic behavioral choices. Strategic linkages between these two approaches are rare, although numerous Science and Technology Studies have demonstrated how closely linked the technical and the social realm are. The concept of co-evolution, developed in this dissertation, utilizes this holistic understanding to suggest a synergistic relationship between technology and behavior. In its most condensed definition, co-evolution signifies a process in which suppliers and users of technologies jointly devise new technologies that makes socially desired behaviors attractive. In such a construct, both technology and behavior change in a concerted way, they co-evolve. I borrow this concept from the discipline of architecture and expand it to cities and regions. As I demonstrate in two detailed case studies, one from Belgium, the other from Germany, a vocabulary based on co-evolutionary notions is better suited to describe these cases than the vocabularies of either of the conventional approaches. From this finding, I infer that it also is better suited to describe similarly successful future cases, that is, to imagine and propose new strategies. In order to strengthen the inspirational character of the co-evolution hypothesis, I identify traits that all co-evolutionary projects have in common. These eight so-called “memes” also prove very useful in the systematic construction of a definition of co-evolution. The last chapter contains my responses to a number of potential critiques of the co-evolution hypothesis, which makes the overall argument more robust. In the conclusion, I discuss the policy implications of my findings to increase their applicability. These recommendations are not meant as claims of ultimate Truth, but rather, in a pragmatist sense, as proposals regarding what we should try out next to approach the ideal of sustainable development.