Article written by 2008 DPDF Critical Studies of Science & Technology Policy Fellow Tischa A. Munoz-Erickson, Ariel E. Lugo, Elvia Meléndez-Ackerman, Luis E. Santiago-Acevedo, José
Seguinot-Barbosa, Pablo Méndez-Lázaro, Myrna Hall, Braulio Quintero, Alonso Ramírez, Diana García Montiel,
Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr., Olga M. Ramos-González, Raúl Santiago-Bartolomei, Julio Verdejo Ortíz,
Jorge R. Ortíz-Zayas, Carmen M. Concepción, Daniela Cusack, Juan Giusti, William McDowell, María
Luz Cruz-Torres, Julio Vallejo, Lindsay Cray, Jess Zimmerman, Víctor Cuadrado-Landrau, and Magaly
Figueroa:

This paper presents initial efforts to establish the San Juan Urban Long-Term Research Area Exploratory
(ULTRA-Ex), a long-term program aimed at developing transdisciplinary social-ecological system (SES)
research to address vulnerability and sustainability for the municipality of San Juan. Transdisciplinary
approaches involve the collaborations between researchers, stakeholders, and citizens to produce sociallyrelevant
knowledge and support decision-making. We characterize the transdisciplinary arrangement
emerging in San Juan ULTRA-Ex as a knowledge-action network composed of multiple formal and informal
actors (e.g., scientists, policymakers, civic organizations and other stakeholders) where knowledge, ideas, and
strategies for sustainability are being produced, evaluated, and validated. We describe in this paper the on-theground
social practices and dynamics that emerged from developing a knowledge-action network in our local
context. Specifically, we present six social practices that were crucial to the development of our knowledgeaction
network: 1) understanding local framings; 2) analyzing existing knowledge-action systems in the city;
3) framing the social-ecological research agenda; 4) collaborative knowledge production and integration; 5)
boundary objects and practices; and 6) synthesis, application, and adaptation. We discuss key challenges and
ways to move forward in building knowledge-action networks for sustainability. Our hope is that the insights
learned from this process will stimulate broader discussions on how to develop knowledge for urban
sustainability, especially in tropical cities where these issues are under-explored.