Operationalization of Strategic Niche Management by Living Labs as Leverage for a Sustainable Transition: Illustration by Student Work on Tourism Infrastructure in the Tanzanian Context

Abstract

As there has been an increasing awareness of the severity and consequences of global warming over recent decades, there has also been increasing efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Despite sustainable transition is collectively agreed upon, tangible actions in the Tanzanian context, and more in particular in the tourism infrastructure, are limited. Unsustainable daily practices in the built environment are usually embedded in wider socio-technological systems that are resistant to radical change and innovation.

Transition management approaches and instruments such as Living Labs provide a new orientation to societal change. It aims for the creation of sustainable innovative practices within socio-technical niches, which may have the potential to upscale to wider systemic transformations. In recent years, the architecture students of the Faculty of Architecture and Arts at the University of Hasselt (Belgium) have conducted designerly research targeting sustainable tourism infrastructure developments within the Tanzanian context, specifically in Dar es Salaam.

On the theoretical background of Strategic Niche Management, this paper interprets the concept of Living Labs for the building sector, within the built environment and within Higher Education Institutes for Architecture and Planning. For the latter, exemplary results of student work is discussed. The objective is: in general, to provide incentives to close the gap between ‘rhetoric’ and ‘reality’; and in specific, to increase the awareness of the potentials of the Tanzanian tourism sector for sustainability. The underlying objective is twofold: first, to highlight transition management and Living Labs in education and training as a ‘short cut’ towards a sustainable transition; and second, incentivize a discussion on adding a ‘build’ component to the student ‘design’ projects, aiming for real-life sustainable projects.