TITLE:
Supporting Transformative Agency among Urban Actors in the Change Laboratory Intervention
AUTHORS:
Virpi Lund
KEYWORDS:
Activity Theory, Change Laboratory, Collaboration, Transformative Agency, Urban Development
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.9 No.3,
August
9,
2021
ABSTRACT: This paper contributes to
the study of residents’ and civil servants’ transformative agency in urban
development with the aid of the framework of cultural-historical activity
theory. The aim is to investigate the emergence of transformative agency in
five workshops, based on the method of Change Laboratory®, in the city of
Espoo, Finland. The formative intervention focused on exploring the
collaboration of residents and actors in urban development. The workshop
discussions were analysed with the help of the manifestations of contradictions
in neighbourhood development connected to the expression of the types of
transformative agency and elements of the human activity system. This enabled
the identification of the topics of the discussions and the development of transformative
agency through envisioning the developmental potential of the activity and
taking action to transform it. The findings call attention to creating the
tools and means to facilitate the participation and building the transformative
agency through time.