Abstract
Design for sustainability transitions is an emerging field within design for sustainability that aims to provide guidelines and strategies to generate systemic change in society, mostly at the socio-technical system level. Nevertheless, some limitations of current approaches have been pointed out by scholars, including their market-centered perspective and the vague definition of the sustainability visions adopted. To overcome these limitations, a shift towards a heterodox economic perspective is needed. Such a shift could help define new goals for design – satisfying fundamental human needs – through an integrative vision of humans within their environment. The city scale appears particularly appropriate for this purpose. In this paper, a conceptual framework is presented, based on the provisioning systems heuristic model and the integration of the milieu (Umwelt) approach, to re-think our relations with non-humans.
Keywords
Design for Sustainability Transitions, Provisioning systems, Fundamental human needs, Milieu
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2018
Citation
Ritouet, M., Tanguy, A., Reyes, T., and Laforest, V. (2026) Heterodox economic perspective for designing sustainability transitions: Integrating fundamental human needs and the milieu approach, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2018
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Heterodox economic perspective for designing sustainability transitions: Integrating fundamental human needs and the milieu approach
Design for sustainability transitions is an emerging field within design for sustainability that aims to provide guidelines and strategies to generate systemic change in society, mostly at the socio-technical system level. Nevertheless, some limitations of current approaches have been pointed out by scholars, including their market-centered perspective and the vague definition of the sustainability visions adopted. To overcome these limitations, a shift towards a heterodox economic perspective is needed. Such a shift could help define new goals for design – satisfying fundamental human needs – through an integrative vision of humans within their environment. The city scale appears particularly appropriate for this purpose. In this paper, a conceptual framework is presented, based on the provisioning systems heuristic model and the integration of the milieu (Umwelt) approach, to re-think our relations with non-humans.