Bruce Goldstein
Bruce Goldstein is an Associate Professor in the Program in Environmental Design and a Research Associate in the Institute of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, where his work bridges academic inquiry with real-world transformation efforts. His research focuses on how communities, practitioners, and experts develop trusting partnerships to co-create solutions for complex social-ecological challenges. Central to Bruce’s work is an exploration of organizational strategies, leadership models, and governance frameworks that foster both local innovation and global dissemination. He examines how tensions within organizations—such as the need for coherence versus autonomy—can be managed productively to enhance both situated, place-based action and network-wide impact.
Bruce employs qualitative, interpretive methods inspired by participatory action research, working closely with practitioners to co-develop insights and build transformative capacity. His recent work explores how leaders in translocal networks leverage paradoxical tensions—like harmony and disruption, and reflection and action—to generate learning and scale sustainability solutions, creating adaptive environments that foster innovation across diverse contexts. He leads the Transformations Conference Series and Community of Practice, which has convened multiple international events to explore sustainability transformations, including recent conferences in Sydney, Prague, Portland, and online in 2023. Upcoming conferences are planned for York, UK, in June 2024, and Kruger National Park, South Africa, in August 2024.
Bruce employs qualitative, interpretive methods inspired by participatory action research, working closely with practitioners to co-develop insights and build transformative capacity. His recent work explores how leaders in translocal networks leverage paradoxical tensions—like harmony and disruption, and reflection and action—to generate learning and scale sustainability solutions, creating adaptive environments that foster innovation across diverse contexts. He leads the Transformations Conference Series and Community of Practice, which has convened multiple international events to explore sustainability transformations, including recent conferences in Sydney, Prague, Portland, and online in 2023. Upcoming conferences are planned for York, UK, in June 2024, and Kruger National Park, South Africa, in August 2024.
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As planners grow increasingly
confident that they have settled on the right
concepts and methods to conduct stake-
holder-based collaboration, they are not
considering what can be achieved through
other collaborative approaches.
Purpose:
We aimed to explore
how creating
a network of place- and stakeholder-based
collaboratives using communities of practice
could strengthen individual collaboratives
and achieve network synergies.
Methods:
Using a case study approach, we
draw out lessons for collaborative planning
from our research on the U.S. Fire Learning
Network (FLN), a collaborative initiative to
restore ecosystems that depend on fire. We
analyzed data from over 140 interviews,
hundreds of documents including restoration
plans, newsletters, meeting summaries, maps,
and various other reports, and observations
at more than a dozen regional and national
meetings.
an unprecedented delay in completing a endangered species habitat conservation plan in the Coachella Valley of
southern California. While antagonism grew as each group
relentlessly promoted their perspective on whether to add a
few areas to the habitat preserve, their inability to resolve
their differences was not simply a matter of mistrust or
poor facilitation. I analyze how these biologists practiced
science in a way that supported specific institutional and
ecological relationships that in turn provided a setting in
which each group’s biological expertise was meaningful,
credible, and useful. This tight coupling between scientific
practice and society meant that something was more
important to these scientists than finishing the plan. For
both factions of biologists, ensuring the survival of native
species in the valley rested on their ability to catalyze
institutional relationships that were compatible with
their scientific practice. Understanding this co-production
of science and the social order is a first step toward
effectively incorporating different experts in negotiation
and implementation of technically complex collaborative
agreements.
tragedies to come.
independent efforts to engage in ecological fire restoration work without need of either hierarchal authority or collective social capital. This imaginary may allow the FLN to draw on the creativity and adaptive innovation of collaboration to reform fire management institutions and fire-adapted ecosystems.
suppression toward ecological restoration and community protection. In its first 2 years, the FLN linked place-based collaboratives at a national scale. Using structured planning exercises, the FLN mediated between central coordination
and collaborative autonomy by guiding partners through construction of place-based and mutually coherent narratives. These narratives situated landscape partners within an arc of conflict, crisis, and resolution, aligning partners with the goals of FLN’s sponsoring organizations while enhancing community solidarity and shared purpose. FLN’s narrative framework placed fire managers in a heroic role of restorationist, legitimized multiple professional ways of knowing, and built collaborative capacity, thus charting a path from crisis to renewal for ecological and human communities and for fire management itself.
informed new possibilities for planning practice beyond disaster mitigation and response. In turn, communicative planners offered resilience scholars ideas about how collaboration could accomplish more than enhance rational decision making of the commons. Through these exchanges, the symposium fostered ideas about collaborative governance and the critical role of expertise in fostering communicative resilience.
To access
As planners grow increasingly
confident that they have settled on the right
concepts and methods to conduct stake-
holder-based collaboration, they are not
considering what can be achieved through
other collaborative approaches.
Purpose:
We aimed to explore
how creating
a network of place- and stakeholder-based
collaboratives using communities of practice
could strengthen individual collaboratives
and achieve network synergies.
Methods:
Using a case study approach, we
draw out lessons for collaborative planning
from our research on the U.S. Fire Learning
Network (FLN), a collaborative initiative to
restore ecosystems that depend on fire. We
analyzed data from over 140 interviews,
hundreds of documents including restoration
plans, newsletters, meeting summaries, maps,
and various other reports, and observations
at more than a dozen regional and national
meetings.
an unprecedented delay in completing a endangered species habitat conservation plan in the Coachella Valley of
southern California. While antagonism grew as each group
relentlessly promoted their perspective on whether to add a
few areas to the habitat preserve, their inability to resolve
their differences was not simply a matter of mistrust or
poor facilitation. I analyze how these biologists practiced
science in a way that supported specific institutional and
ecological relationships that in turn provided a setting in
which each group’s biological expertise was meaningful,
credible, and useful. This tight coupling between scientific
practice and society meant that something was more
important to these scientists than finishing the plan. For
both factions of biologists, ensuring the survival of native
species in the valley rested on their ability to catalyze
institutional relationships that were compatible with
their scientific practice. Understanding this co-production
of science and the social order is a first step toward
effectively incorporating different experts in negotiation
and implementation of technically complex collaborative
agreements.
tragedies to come.
independent efforts to engage in ecological fire restoration work without need of either hierarchal authority or collective social capital. This imaginary may allow the FLN to draw on the creativity and adaptive innovation of collaboration to reform fire management institutions and fire-adapted ecosystems.
suppression toward ecological restoration and community protection. In its first 2 years, the FLN linked place-based collaboratives at a national scale. Using structured planning exercises, the FLN mediated between central coordination
and collaborative autonomy by guiding partners through construction of place-based and mutually coherent narratives. These narratives situated landscape partners within an arc of conflict, crisis, and resolution, aligning partners with the goals of FLN’s sponsoring organizations while enhancing community solidarity and shared purpose. FLN’s narrative framework placed fire managers in a heroic role of restorationist, legitimized multiple professional ways of knowing, and built collaborative capacity, thus charting a path from crisis to renewal for ecological and human communities and for fire management itself.
informed new possibilities for planning practice beyond disaster mitigation and response. In turn, communicative planners offered resilience scholars ideas about how collaboration could accomplish more than enhance rational decision making of the commons. Through these exchanges, the symposium fostered ideas about collaborative governance and the critical role of expertise in fostering communicative resilience.