Historical Evolution of Wicked Problems – Transition Design Seminar CMU

in mapping the historical evolution of a wicked problem, we must identify the events, beliefs, attitudes, innovations and norms within the landscape, regime and niche levels, but we must also learn to understand the complex systems dynamics at work within the whole.

. It uses the Multi-level Perspective framework (MLP) to map the systems transition at three key levels:

The Landscape Level : at this macro systems level the societal landscape is determined by changes in the macro economy, political culture, demography, natural environment, and worldviews and paradigms, which are usually slow moving and resistant... See more

Interactions among the three levels (landscape, regime and niche) are social, technical, institutional, infrastructural and normative and involve both material and non-material factors.

in a 1978 paper, sociologist Elise Boulding argued that society was suffering from a type of “temporal exhaustion in which...one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imaging the future.” And, little time left to reflect upon and understand the past.

The Regime : this meso systems level comprises the social norms, interests, rules, belief systems, technologies, infrastructures and built environments through which the status quo operates and reproduces itself. The regime is managed through networks of companies, organizations, and institutions as well as through politics and governance (policies... See more

The Niche : this micro systems level consists of individual actors, technologies, and local practices.

“Incubation” is a term often used to describe how innovative, risk-taking experiments are protected from regime norms and have the opportunity to take root and sometimes destabilize the Regime.