Informal placemaking and energy transition: a review of trends on community-led energy initiatives for social justice

ABSTRACT

The energy transition is one of today’s major challenges. A central issue in the energy transition is the use of space (land, buildings, oceans, etc.) for the deployment of renewable energies. However, this issue is often only dealt with on a large scale and quantitatively, and not qualitatively and grounded in the urban and territorial reality. Energy policies do not always take into account places and their creation, where society is at the centre. The informal construction of places, based on bottom-up actions from communities, has a key role to play in order to make this transition in a fair and environmentally responsible way. This research focuses on reviewing trends in informal place-making and energy transition. In particular, it looks at community-based energy generation initiatives that seek social justice. These are the social alternative of energy transition with co-responsibility of the territory where they are inscribed.

KEYWORDS:

• Informal placemaking
• energy transition
• community energy
• social justice
• sustainable places

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the anonymous reviewers and all the colleagues of COST Action 18204 “Dynamics of placemaking and digitization in Europe’s cities”. This Action investigates how placemaking activities, like civil urban design, local knowledge production and re-shape and reinvent public space improve citizens’ involvement in urban planning and urban design. In other hand, this paper is also an outcome of the competitive project “Integrating Carbon Neutrality and Green Behaviours in the Multi-agent Strategic Management of Smart Destinations through Digital Tools”, State Plan for Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research 2021-2023, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain, PID2021-127893OB-I00.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the COST ACTION 18204. The European Cooperation in Science and Technology, COST, is an EU-funded programme that enables researchers and innovators to set up their interdisciplinary research networks (COST Actions) in Europe andbeyond, in order to strengthen Europe’s capacity to address scientific, technological and societal challenges.

Notes on contributors

Alexandra Delgado-Jiménez

Alexandra Delgado-Jiménez PhD Architect and urban planner, received the Bend Steinacher International Scholarship for young urban planners and researchers from METREX, Network of European Metropolitan Areas and Regions and Best Practice Short List worldwide in the framework of the 8th United Nations International Best Practice Competition 2010 for the Urban and Territorial Sustainability Platform of the Observatory on Sustainability in Spain. She is Director of the Advanced Urban Planning Workshop of the Master in Architecture, Principal Researcher of the group “Architecture and urban planning in the face of social, economic and territorial transformations” and Assistant Professor at Universidad Antonio de Nebrija. She is a collaborating researcher at the PDTA Department of Sapienza-Università di Roma and has been visiting professor at Università IAUV in Venice, CEPAL of the United Nations in Santiago de Chile and in academic programmes organised by Harbin Institute of Technology and TEC Monterrey.