Context-Driven Transition Management as a Necessary Vehicle for Sustainable Urban Futures in Suriname

Abstract

The capital of Suriname has experienced enormous growth over the past decennia. De decline of industries in other urban settlement have resulted in migration to the capital along with population growth and ongoing country immigration. With the absence of sound urban and spatial planning, the result is urban sprawl where increasing population and traffic density create ongoing specialization of services in the capital with continuously decreasing action radius; there is a tendency where people opt to live further from the city core but which makes the utilization of services in the city's core cost-prohibitive. The answer to this is the creation of new urban settlements which build on new industries with increasing returns. However, this implies a break from existing paradigms with respect to strategizing, policy, planning, tourism, logistics, urbanism, etc. This requires a transition for which management has been broken down in several steps in literature. However, transitions tend to differ along geographical parameters; for instance, regimes tend to be relatively stronger in developing countries. Thus, transition management needs to fit the context which requires assessment tools such as Quinn's culture model and the STEEPL and OPTIMISM frameworks to anticipate pitfalls and opportunities during the transition.