OTRO METODO ESPAÑOL PARA L EER LOS NAIPES NAPOLEON

Cognitive processes are mental processes of perception, memory, judgment and reasoning, and are related to the action of acquiring knowledge and understanding

through thought, experience and the senses11

• On the one hand, the use of learning, knowledge and experience in governance

processes is core to resilience thinking (Lebel et al. 2006). From this point of view, the process of learning from past experiences to gain knowledge about how to face future challenges becomes crucial and helps to build a shared vision about the future. As discussed, sustainable urban development is about accommodating the different interests of stakeholders in order to build a common vision of how a sustainable pathway might be. In this mission, there are huge implications of the different discourses, perspectives, theories and beliefs (Wenger 2000). In this regard it is also imperative to recognise the importance of social learning as a process of gaining individual and collective knowledge and experience.

. Individual and collective knowledge, experience, values and perceptions are important to sustainability, resilience and transformation in two regards: (i) the relevance of learning and knowledge in resilience thinking and (ii) the importance of stakeholders’ cognitions in urban decision-making processes.

The importance of the cognitive dimension for resilience building in cities is in fact being increasingly recognised, especially when ecological memory and human connection with the environment are considered (Colding and Barthel

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2013). The role of cities as hubs for change and transformation requires that new types of knowledge be acquired for robust resilience management (Beratan 2007) and transition management, i.e. for planning and managing the process of urban change (van de Meene et al. 2011; Nevens et al. 2013). This includes information about stakeholders’ knowledge of how urban systems work and how they might react to certain stimuli. Complexities and uncertainties in regard to cities are often not reflected in approaches based on statistical methods or physical analysis, and experience and knowledge of stakeholders are crucial to conceive alternative sustainable transition pathways. Institutionally diverse participatory approaches are critical in this regard as they help to enhance learning processes which are critical for resilience management (Carpenter et al. 2001; Gunderson and Holling

2002)12

• On the other hand it is equally important to learn how, why and to what extent

decision-making processes related to resilience and transformation management are influenced by values and cultural contexts (

.

Adger et al. 2012).

Complexity in cities is also a result of the fact that urban change manifest through processes in space and time (Batty 2007). Although drivers of this change (i.e. of urban development) might have different natures (such as historical, physical, natural or comparative advantage), also, random decision-making is important to understand how urban development evolves (see again Batty 2007). Linked to this idea, in this dissertation I try to understand this randomness by exploring how cognitions affect decision-making in cities and its processes of change.

The matter of whether cognitions in the form of heuristics, biases and previous experiences affect decision making processes, including those related to the environment and the human-nature relationship, and if so how, has been also

12 _{Clarifying note: this dissertation does not include a review of the literature linking (social or institutional)}

participation and (urban) resilience. Notwithstanding, the mentions to the need of building social learning through mechanisms such as robust participation processes is more and more recognized in the literature. For this reason, to my consideration, this requires further and deeper research in the future.

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discussed previously in the relevant literature (see e.g. Schwenk 1988; Antal and Hukkinen 2010). As previously argued, discourses may have huge implications when building a shared vision of what sustainable urban development involves. Boulanger (2005) also explores cognitive issues in sustainability assessment. He argues that it is hard to see policy-making as purely rational, and that approaches that include a cognitive dimension are appropriate.

In the field of climate change it has been argued that social behaviour, lifestyles, culture and values have an important role as enablers of climate action but also as hinderers of it at both community and institutional levels (Azevedo et al. 2013). Acceptance of the need for a change in attitudes, understanding of values and recognition of capacities are key to enhancing capacity for adaptation (Adger et al. 2012). In this context, it is argued that the influence and potential of social capital in the mechanics of climate action need to be analysed in order to elucidate successful pathways of change and transformation (Westley et al. 2011; Adger et al. 2012; Park et al. 2012).

As illustrated in Figure 1.4, knowledge and understanding of experiences, observations and perceptions affect the decisions to be made, and therefore the actions to be implemented, which subsequently feed back to the former. The extent to which individual cognitions influence strategic decisions might vary depending on the context, but it is

often a very important factor and is never an irrelevant one13

13 _{Personal communication from Miklós Antal through the Ecological Economics Mailing List of the}

Autonomous University of Barcelona on January 8, 2014.

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Figure 1.3 Influence of the cognitive dimension on decision-making processes

In general, understanding these processes can help to better inform processes of adaptation and transformation (Adger et al. 2012), particularly by means of participatory approaches which integrate diverse perceptions and multiple scales. Such approaches might be based, for example, on discourse analysis (e.g. the Q Method or the Delphi technique), on mental models (e.g. agent-based or fuzzy modelling) or on multi-criteria evaluation (e.g. social or participatory MCA). In this dissertation I attempt to fill the current gap in this matter by addressing resilience and transformation from a cognitive perspective using suitable participatory, semi-quantitative methods.