How do time-bound practices initiate local sustainability pathways?

This paper examines the micro-scale ignition of sustainability pathways in multi-actor collaboration in an urban living lab in Tampere, Finland, and aims to capture the reconfigurations that lead to urban sustainability. The conventional model of sustainability focusing on economic, environmental and social pillars does not correspond to the dynamic nature of urban sustainability. Thus, we utilise a sustainability framework that is more sensitive to urban conditions and compatible with a temporal typology of practices carried out by diverse actors in the living lab. The results show, first, that the emerging sustainability pathways are based on the coexistence of diverse actors and resources, develop through interconnected temporal phases of practices and are differently sensitised to place depending on the temporal phase. The sustainability pathways reach permanence when the actions of catalysing and revamping take the mode of routinisation. Second, we locate the generative moments of reconfigurations and address the cumulative nature of sustainability. In conclusion, this helps to recognise the incipient forms of sustainability pathways and their potential for local sustainability transitions.