Local Narratives of Change Around Wastelands : An Inside View About Building Social-Ecological Transformation from the Urban Planning Perspective

Wasteland transformation and regeneration provide the opportunity for initiating change and building a sustainable future in urban social-ecological systems. Yet regenerations are often driven by market forces and short- to mid-term issues. This paper explores the transformation of wastelands to initiate and navigate transformative change, from the perspective of urban planning actors, at the local level. A mixed approach is used to construct and analyze the content of narratives of change based on narrative research, discourse analysis, and sensemaking, which is used as an approach to deepen the analysis of the narratives of change. The results highlight that all the narratives question the current neoliberal economic system and the ensuing unsustainable urbanization. They show that solutions support and reproduce, to different degrees, the dominant development pathway that overlooks ecological and long-term issues. Several recurrent themes were identified in the narratives: the recognition of the unsustainability of the current economic system; power imbalances; a restrictive view of human needs; the underrepresentation of ecosystems and biodiversity issues; and a narrow perspective about the global change impacts at the local level. The findings reflect short-term insights and the poor capacity of local urban planning to incorporate transformative changes and deal with long-term global impacts. In conclusion, narrative analysis through sensemaking helps us to understand the perspective of planning actors and describe the situation based on the characteristics of their projections, as a departure point for building a pathway for the social-ecological transformation