Bas van Vliet

Urban resilience building is now a key feature of urban policy and international development agendas. However, dominant approaches focused on infrastructure and system-level persis-tence often reproduce structural inequalities that produce, sustain and exacerbate vulnerabil-ity. Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus frameworks highlight macro-scale sectoral intercon-nections but overlook the daily interactions of households and communities, neglecting the politics and power relations that shape what forms of resilience are built and for whom.This paper develops a nexus-practice approach that integrates WEF nexus analysis with social practice theory and socio-ecological systems resilience thinking. We build on previous analy-sis of cooking practices in informal settlements of Kampala, Uganda, and extend it with a comparative case study of zimnina making and urban gardening among vulnerable house-holds in Sofia, Bulgaria.We develop an extended typology of resilience building forms: persistence, adaptation, trans-formation, and regression. We show how nexus-practice interactions produce different out-comes under different structural conditions. In both cities, energy poverty emerges as the piv-otal vulnerability at the household nexus, shaping food preparation, water safety, and nutri-tional quality in ways invisible to sectoral governance. We discuss how infrastructure inter-ventions can lead to regressive forms of resilience building that appear transformative but ex-clude the most marginalised groups.A nexus-practice approach reveals the structural conditions that constrain transformative re-silience building and suggests targeted interventions in energy provision, land tenure, and the recognition of informal resilience practices that generate positive effects across the nexus. It also highlights the transformative potential in the everyday practices of the urban poor.

The installation of wind turbines and solar parks in valued rural landscapes has led to local concerns and perceived injustices to the extent that the societal acceptance of the energy transition is at stake. Although the literature on energy justice is blooming, research into citizens' understandings of justice with regards to regional energy transitions is rare. This paper examines the aspects citizens consider relevant when discussing a just energy transition in a regional context. Eleven focus groups, including 42 participants with various backgrounds, were conducted in four cities in the province of Overijssel, the Netherlands. The results show that citizens express justice claims by referring to spaces, places, and scales both within and beyond the region. From the perspective of citizens, regional energy transitions are both influenced by, and have an impact on, existing socio‐spatial inequalities at multiple levels, ranging from households to the entire world. Citizens also acknowledge that energy policies and changes made at one scale can create injustices at other scales, referring to the different impacts national subsidies have on rich and poor neighborhoods, or to different effects of implementing renewable energy facilities on rural landscapes and urban regions. Our findings illustrate the multi‐scalar character of justice concerns in regional energy transitions. A better understanding of the spatial justice considerations that are fundamental to the concerns of citizens can help improve policy processes and communication about regional energy transitions.

Wastewater from sanitation contains several scarce resources that can be reused for purposes of energy and food production. Sanitation infrastructures, however, are often overlooked in debates on circular food systems, while the role of sanitation could be pivotal in combatting resource depletion facing agriculture. Transitioning sanitation infrastructures to support circular systems also needs a thorough understanding of the sanitation practices involved, as resource-oriented sanitation systems require a de-routinization in how we make use of toilets and deal with wastewater. Instead, novel sanitation practices are needed for circular developments around sanitation to become successfully part of daily routines and ensure the reuse potential of wastewater. This research paper focuses on understanding how sanitation practices are shaped and embedded and its implications for the re-routinization of novel sanitation practices. A mixed-method research design has been adopted comparing sanitation practices and infrastructures in three distinct neighborhoods within the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region. First, a survey was conducted that enabled the typology of neighborhoods. Second, in-depth interviews in three neighborhoods were conducted to uncover the embeddedness of sanitation practices. Results highlight the importance of re-routinizing practice when linking sanitation to food systems and list five mechanisms that may help normalizing novel sanitation practices.

Contemporary packages of housing retrofit equipment are based on models of expected energy savings with regard to globally standardized thermal comfort levels. Previous research shows that the energy savings realised after a housing retrofit is substantially lower than expected. Attempts to reduce energy demand by physical re-design, utilising technical standards for thermal comfort as well as financial incentives, tend to ignore the role of retrofit interventions in the construction of everyday practices of thermal comfort making. Thermal comfort practices of heating, cooling and ventilation are moderated by specific householders’ motivations which constitute ‘wants’ and emerging ‘needs’ in the interaction with the housing retrofit equipment. This paper proposes that the interactions between the retrofitted buildings and the householders are the sum of material affordances, as signified by the design of the housing equipment on the one hand, and the practical affordances in practices-as-performances on the other. The study presents comfort practices in relation to recently retrofitted low-income housing estates in Beijing, Mianyang (Sichuan province, South-west China) and Amsterdam on the basis of 50 qualitative interviews with householders in each city. The paper concludes that the expected energy saving is counteracted by a poor match between conventional retrofit packages and householders’ considerations about their thermal comfort. To better reduce energy demand and to mitigate energy poverty, retrofit packages should provide adaptive thermal comfort as preferred by householders, rather than fixed or tightly specified thermal comfort. Such a perspective may support a more flexible and inclusive use of housing equipment as part of retrofit programs.