1.1 Narratives of urban sustainability

Multiple international frameworks refer to sustainability and its social, environmental and economic dimensions. Sustainability narratives address the fair use and distribution of resources by providing transferable and scalable solutions [6]. However, the understanding of what makes a city sustainable differs fundamentally between actors and countries, and so do related narratives [7]. Dominant technocratic perspectives on urban sustainability [8] are influenced by global discourses. Not only are they dominated by Global North perspectives [9], they also underrate the need to put people at the heart of climate [10] and urban sustainability [11,12] action.

Hence, broadening existing narratives would benefit from a contextual understanding [13], including of values of beliefs of people [14]. That way, diverse perspectives of multiple actors could be considered, making them the much-needed agents of transformative change. Narrative framing in urban contexts has already been analyzed and found relevant in the context of sharing economy [15] for community empowerment, commons approaches [16], urban metabolism [17] and sustainable mobility [18] approaches. Urban narratives have a particular potential to emphasize social sustainability [8,10], such as cultural identity and community memory [19], and urban health concerns of urban under-represented groups [20], and to contribute to innovative planning approaches such as the 15-minute-city [2]. Such narratives would come with the power to address emergent and complex urban challenges, including from climate change [21].

1.2 Communicating desirable urban futures

Urban imaginaries can be powerful tools to sensitize citizens, identify common goals and build individual and collective visions [22]. Stories can help to communicate climate change and the need for sustainability action [23] and ultimately transformation towards sustainability. Understanding what climate change and other urban challenges mean to people in real life [24] would give people and communities a voice. Storytelling and the construction of narratives can empower the author or author groups and contribute to overcome the feeling of powerlessness [20,25], thereby supporting emancipation and democratization. It can be done by individuals or groups, a powerful tool to show urban realities different from the mainstream, such as from women of color [26], indigenous and elderly [27], youth [28] migrants and informal dwellers [29]. Pluralizing voices can also support overcoming colonial continuities of discourses (re)inscribing inequalities between Global North and South [30], broaden dominant urban images and empower to co-develop alternative futures [31].

Moser identified 10 tasks for communication amidst a societal transformation, from naming and framing the needed change, transformative imagination, the use of stories for sense- and meaning-making to fostering hope and engagement [32,33]. Transformative communication enables conversations, allows for voicing perceptions, beliefs and concerns [34–37], supported by creative and art-based methods to collect and communicate visions [38]. Particularly visuals have the power to show but also shape the attitude of people [39]

1.3 Need to change knowledge dissemination in and for policy-making

Successful engagement requires knowing how people relate to each other, to their surroundings, to challenges what might drive them to act to realize ideas in their community [40,41]. Only having access to information will not have enough effect on uptake [42]. Public engagement is also key, including in climate [43] and urban [44] action would also contribute to better understanding of their needs by authorities [45]. It can be facilitated by assessing and showcasing how individuals already witness it and how they respond to its impacts [32]. That would require consideration of people’s attitudes and perceptions. Dominant approaches are however rather supportive of producing managerial governance recommendations [46], conveyed in too jargon language [47]. New knowledge systems are needed to support the scale and urgency of global transformation needed [32,48,49] Considering individuals’ perceptions, preferences and sense of well-being is critical for designing urban policies and strategies that are sustainable and inclusive [5].

Mobilizing actors and envisioning alternative and more desirable futures [50] requires transformative communication and compelling narratives that speak to the target audiences. It requires taking into account divergent perceptions, prior knowledge and potential biases [24,50]. Past research emphasized that behavioral change towards climate action requires both cognitive engagement (need to understand) and emotional engagement (need to care), with the latter one in fact likely being more influential [24,51,52]. Just giving facts is not enough as it is mostly not convincing to fellow citizens [53] or policy-makers [54]. Even IPCC communication focusing on understanding and not on care might not be effective with respect to calling for behavior change [55].

Aiming to better understand people’s and policy-makers perception of a desirable and sustainable city and how far they might differ or align globally, this addresses the following research questions:

• What are narratives and related key assets of desirable and sustainable cities, to what extent are they globally comparable?
• How far do visions of desirable and sustainable cities align between citizens and international policy-makers?
• What is the potential of images and narratives in transforming cities towards sustainability?

To shed light on these questions, submissions to an international photo competition were assessed, using a mixed-method approach linking visual and narrative analysis.

3.1 Attributes of desirable and sustainable cities

The keywords used to describe the visions of “desirable and sustainable” on the photos submitted could be clustered into overall nine thematic clusters, in three topical groups:

Group A ‘Social Space‘:

1. Community activities or values: Keywords in this cluster provide a sense of togetherness as found within a community, such as collective, dialogue, diverse, or words that describe objects within a community, such as human being or profession;
2. Culture & religion: Keywords describe cultural aspects of society, including the arts and religion;
3. Health & security: This cluster contains words relative to safety, health, and security;
4. Justice& equity: Keywords relate to notions of justice within urban development, such as equity, accessibility, food security, democratic, etc.;

Group B ‘Feelings, values and perceptions:

1. Look & aesthetics of the city or place: This cluster describes keywords that are related to the look or optics of a city, such as beautiful, modern, and charming;
2. Mood the city or place conveys: Keywords in this cluster evoke a mood, that participants associate with a certain place or city, or that can be found within sustainable cities in general, such as happy, peaceful, or pulsing;

Group C ‘Physical space’:

1. Nature & climate: These keywords relate to aspects of the natural world, including climate, trees, soil, flooding, environment(al) and green,
2. Transport & mobility: These keywords center on modes of transport and movement within cities, such as bicycle, journey, and public transportation;
3. Urban features: This cluster contains keywords that relate to constructed aspects of a city, such as building, solar power, street, urban, and resilient.

The most named cluster in absolute values is covering nature and climate aspects, describing the need for urban greening and its benefits, including for climate protection. Across continents its consideration however varies as shown in Fig 1, from 26% of mentions in Asia to only 9% in Africa, indicating other aspects were found more important there. The overall second and third most named clusters were material and immaterial features, pointing at assets a city should have, and its look and aesthetics. A large proportion of the keywords refer to feelings and perceptions that urban spaces generate or are supposed to generate. While the same clusters could be found across all continents, their distribution varied hugely. While the most named cluster in Asia is nature and climate, urban material and immaterial features were named most often in Europe and Africa, referring to the built environment and that it should for example be clean, efficient, innovative or smart. In the Americas the look and aesthetic cluster was named most often, with adjectives such picturesque or vibrant.

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Fig 1. Percentage distribution of keywords by cluster, as well as the three most frequently mentioned words per world region, in the color of the respective cluster (Map source: freesvg).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000170.g001

With respect to the most named keywords, green, beautiful and inclusive were named at least in 2 continents. Here Europe is a kind of outlier, where the top 3 keywords mostly referred to mobility, which is the 2^nd most named cluster, while in other continents this cluster ranks 4^th or lower. In Africa this cluster was not even mentioned once while all others were mentioned across continents. Justice and equity keywords were mentioned across continents, though to a lesser extent in Asia. Here the variety of keywords is broad, ranging from accessibility to inclusive. Differences are also found between genders. While female contestants comparably name community, justice and safety aspects more, men focused on mobility and urban features.

3.2 Underlying narratives

Together, keywords, photos and related descriptions allowed to flesh out key narrative types. No photo focused on natural environment exclusively and only very few photos showed only built environment or humans, either one person or groups of people. The vast majority of photos featured a mix of these components, with most photos showing either humans and built environment features, or humans and built as well as natural environment features (around 30% each). Around 24% of submitted photos did not include humans but focused on natural and built environment features.

Photo descriptions could be grouped into three categories as well, present across photo content types. They include very short descriptions, ranging from few words to short sentences (around 43%), and longer descriptions contextualizing the activities or locations shown on the photos (around 52%). Another 5% gave longer descriptions with concrete action items. Overall, wordier and story-like narratives were yielded from Asia, Africa and the Americas in comparison to Europe, matching that none of the top-ranked European keywords were from the look & aesthetics or the mood cluster. Submissions with very short descriptions such as “This photo represents sustainable mobility and low carbon emission” (Brazilian participant, 33, submitting a photo from Denmark) came comparably often from photographers who originated from other countries. Linking photos to keywords and descriptions, two major narrative types can be deduced (see Fig 2).

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Fig 2. Content analysis of photos and related keywords, size of bubbles represents the number of mentions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000170.g002

Narrative 1 includes photos of built environment plus natural environment or humans or both. The keywords used to describe these photos come from group C on physical space, covering clusters on nature & climate, transport & mobility, and urban features exclusively, exemplified in Fig 3.

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Fig 3. Selected photos with keyword groups descriptions and narrative types (Photos were converted to black/white, and faces were blurred, mentions of concrete locations were removed).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000170.g003

The vast majority of contributions to this narrative comes from Asia, only one from Africa and none from the Americas.

One example is from an Indian participant, age 32, who describes his submission with the keywords sustainability, green, and vertical garden and explains:

“A man works on his rooftop garden in Kolkata, India. As a result of climate change, drought can make significant impact on the food production of the world. We can use our roofs as a secondary source of food production. In this way, we can help relieve pressure from industrial agriculture and save significant amount of emission of Co2 by using local produce.”

Another example is from a participant from Bangladesh of 30 years who describes his photo with the keywords environment and resilient, and elaborates:

“Bangladesh is a small country with a large population where the number of homeless people is not less. This woman is one of them. Here, the woman is trying to earn a living in the garbage dump in the city. She is trying to collect the various plastic items left in the garbage and sells the plastic products she collects to the factory. The factory owner recycles these plastic materials and turns them into new plastics for use. People are thus playing a silent role in the sustainable development of a city.”Descriptions often begin with some criticism or reflection around the current economic, environmental or socio-cultural status quo of the respective city, and then highlight what particularly positive situation the photography captures, for example “Unplanned extraction of sand from the river is going on for urbanization” (Bangladesh, 44) With around 18%, descriptions in this narrative contain comparably more action items, such as “to adopt a sustainable future we need to move from fossil fuel to clean energy” (India,29 years), or “to mitigate the deadly effect of climate change we people should paddling bicycles in our everyday life” (India, 41 years).

Narrative 2 covers broadly the same photo categories, but keywords come from two or three clusters across at least two thematic groups, making it broader than narrative 1 (see Fig 3). Contributions to this narrative come from all participating continents.

An Indian participant of 29 years describes his photography as follows, adding the keywords sustainable agriculture, food security, and urban planning:

“With the growing population and adverse impacts of climate change, one of the next biggest challenges the human race will face is food security. In developing countries like India, the overextension of urban colonies without long-term planning can gulp in kilometres of fertile agricultural land. This way the balance of food supply and demand is crumbling way too far which can soon lead to utter disruption. For a healthier food system, we have to balance this demand and supply. In order to do that we need more sustainable urban planning and ‘peri-urban agriculture’ could play a major role in that. In this photograph, we can see women working in farmland that has been specially designed in between the rising city to manage the food demand and supply chain in Kolkata, India.”

A participant from Nigeria, age 30, uses the keywords clean, inclusive and resilient and states:

“Lagos has always been a city battling with waste and a clean environment especially in communities. With the decision to make their communities clean, members come together with the aid of community health educators to clean their community.”

A Brazilian of 28 years, who uses the keywords mobility, inclusive, and accessible, explains:

“In the image, we can see a set of elements that make up a city: a cyclist on the bike path, motorbikes and cars on one of the main avenues of the city connecting the centre and east zones. This set presents a complete and complex context at the same time, linking all social classes to the infrastructure of the bridge to offer accessibility, mobility and fluidity in everyday life.”

A German participant of 30 years, who added the keywords silence, political, and lightful to his description, elaborates:

“Looking closer, a diversity of people involved in different are visible in one spot. A couple observing, somebody inside on a work path, tourists on a boat; this is where people meet in the quiet centre of the capital surrounded by water and isolated by car traffic whilst being in a futuristic business district with green parts. A combination, a transition, a compromise. The perfect approach of a green urban existence full of light.”

Longer narratives of this category are often written like stories, in a poetic style. Participants also often express their affection for their cities, proven by statements like “my heart cries for my streets” (Uganda, 22), “This photo was taken in Addis Ababa and it show how beautiful the city is....” (Ethiopia, 24), or “I take my photos in my city Karachi to describe the beauty” (Pakistan, 15) or “The city may be a space of chaos, but it is also a place of beauty and we must act now to preserve it” (Mexico, 36).

Overall, the vast majority of photos and related texts in form of keywords and descriptions is rather complex, going beyond visualizing one single aspect. Related descriptions across both narratives explain that often seemingly very small initiatives or actions like recycling or urban agriculture can have major impact, including in vulnerable urban contexts like marginal settlements. Photographers associate something positive with the situations captured on the photos, however they describe very clearly that, for example, recycling is only a first step in a city ‘battling with waste’ or the perceivable but small benefits of green areas in an otherwise polluted and dense agglomeration. In narrative 1 potential outcomes are described in a more generalized and technical way, including scalability, while narrative 2 refers more to feelings like hope and improving the local context.

3.3 “Expert” understandings of desirable and sustainable cities

The surveys yielded from accredited participants of COP27 after viewing the photo exhibition were grouped in the same clusters as submissions from the competition. Overall keywords could be matched into these clusters and all 9 clusters within the tree topical groups were addressed. The most frequently named clusters were nature & climate (23%), justice & equity (21%), mood and look that the city or place conveys (both 17%) and urban material & immaterial features (13%). Health & security (12%) and culture (6%) followed next, and look & aesthetics (4%) transport & mobility (3%) and community activities or values (1%) ranked last. The distribution of clusters per region, with each region having a different cluster mentioned most often. Africa’s most frequent cluster is mood, while the America’s is justice & equity. Asia’s most frequent cluster is nature and climate and Europe’s is urban features. The three most named keywords across regions are green, safe and inclusive.

While keywords could be structured along the same clusters, some differences with respect to the keywords used between the two survey rounds became apparent as shown in Table 1. Mostly the photo competition survey yielded a higher number of keywords per cluster, which is not surprising given the higher number of participants. The only cluster where the COP survey was richer was justice & equity.

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Table 1. Common keywords per cluster across surveys. Additionally, technical terms mentioned in the COP survey are listed.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000170.t001

COP participants partly linked their vision of desirable and sustainable cities to international paradigms such as leave no one behind, or to the inclusion of different gender and indigenous groups, all linked to justice and equity concerns. Other responses yielded related to approaches like energy sufficiency, biodiversity positivity and carbon neutrality.