Urban infrastructures—water, mobility, energy—drive major greenhouse gas emissions and are leverage points for sustainability transitions. This talk uses a socio-technical systems lens to explain what inhibits or enables transformative infrastructure innovation, illustrated with shifts in the urban water sector. Drawing on cases from California, Northern Europe, and India, it traces how circular water services emerged and became “configurational templates” that enable diffusion across diverse socio-economic contexts. It argues for a stronger multi-scalar view of infrastructure transitions, highlights contributions from human geography, and introduces a scaling-oriented research unit being developed at Eawag and Empa.
