Transformation Rooms: Building Transformative Capacity for European Cities

In the face of societal and environmental challenges in Europe, cities—as socio-technical systems—seek for a deeper understanding of new governance processes and innovative urban policy approaches for profound changes towards sustainability. This paper proposes the ‘transformation room' as orchestration and negotiation format for the joint programming of research and innovation agendas with and for European cities, in order to allow for new urban governance via transnational cooperation and alignment. The ‘transformation room' aims to interlink innovative niches and current regimes in a multi-level governance set-up, in order to allow transformation by (1) defining the main structural elements of roles and rules for cooperation; (2) offering process elements for the co-creation, experimentation, and implementation of orientation; and (3) combining both elements in a specific form of transformative leadership. The paper identifies success criteria for transformative leadership and, consequently, the enhancement of urban transformative capacity.