Reconciling conflicting sustainability rationalities: a co-creation approach in urban logistics governance

Abstract Transforming urban logistics governance to become more sustainable comprises reconciling diverse actors’ rationalities. Yet, conventional market-driven solutions, which aim to optimize freight transport, tend to focus on operational efficiency over diverse rationalities. In this paper, we reframe the challenge of urban logistics sustainability governance as that of knowledge integration, which necessitates a transdisciplinary approach that engages with diverse rationalities. By combining data from a co-creation workshop and interviews with logistics actors, we investigate if and how urban logistics sustainability governance can benefit from unpacking these multiple rationalities. Our findings show emergent tensions in Bergen stem from the ad-hoc and fragmented nature of urban logistics planning, which obscures the diverse actor rationalities and assumptions. Actors navigated these tensions in dialogic processes and co-created a shared understanding that sustaining dialogues and using a public-space perspective could mainstream logistics into the city’s planning process. Adopting a transdisciplinary co-creation approach, we demonstrate, can reconcile the diverse rationalities in urban logistics sustainability governance. It facilitates individual and social learning in dialogic processes where actors can reflect on each other’s perspectives, agency, and expectations. We thus call for a shift in planning from an emphasis on market-driven solutions toward process-focus to navigate the innate messiness of governing urban logistics sustainability.