Breaking silos: can cities break down institutional barriers in climate planning?

Abstract

Climate and energy transformation has become one of the core issues municipalities must address, and there is a recognition that the local scale is essential if we are to address the fundamental changes needed to face global climate change. However, the nature of climate change as a wicked problem is not compatible with the specialised and sectorised nature of policy-making institutions. Urban and municipal responses to societal problems often involve making a plan. In this article, the potential of climate action plans to break institutional silos is examined. Overcoming institutional obstacles can bring forth new opportunities to shrink the gap between targets and results through knowledge transfer, identification of co-benefits and anchoring of the plan beyond the municipal department in charge. Two cases demonstrating two different approaches to ambitious local climate planning are discussed. Mainstreaming of the planning process can be observed in Trondheim, whilst in Bergen, the process has been highly politically driven. Three factors appear to be important to overcome institutional barriers at the local level: broad processes, political will and institutional entrepreneurs.

Urban Planning as a Strategy to Implement Social Sustainability Policy Goals? The Case of Temporary Housing for Immigrants in Gothenburg, Sweden

“…For example, such reasons might include procedural and institutional barriers, behavioral and cultural barriers (see, e.g., [82] for a study of sustainability policy implementation in urban planning). Similar hinders are reported in studies that investigate barriers for sustainability policy implementation in different areas, e.g., sustainable transportation (e.g., [83,84]), natural resource management and planning [85,86], conservation (e.g., [87]) and climate change (e.g., [88]).…”

How actors are (dis)integrating policy agendas for multi-functional blue and green infrastructure projects on the ground

“…This observation confirms how policy integration is a contested activity that reflects the existing power relations (Sharp & Richardson, 2001). In our cases, we can see that even when the remit of projects encompasses integrated policy aims, such as Bradford's Highways department's aspirations for the Canal Road Corridor, the structural and management challenges of working between agendas act as an impediment (Oseland, 2019). The integration we can observe in our cases has been 'hard won' through concerted action and external funding pressures.…”

“…Previous research has reported on the extent to which urban water management has been integrated with other policy goals, for example examining barriers for climate adaptation mainstreaming (e.g. Measham et al, 2011;Oseland, 2019;Uittenbroek et al, 2013). While this more top-down conception regards policy integration as an output (something that is either achieved or not; Tosun & Lang, 2017), it provides limited insights about actors' rationales for pursuing policy integration.…”

Urban Water Governance and Learning—Time for More Systemic Approaches?

“…We conclude that future research on this needs to be well-grounded in practice, through action research and co-production of knowledge, to look for answers about why systems approaches are very much promoted in theory, but not well implemented in actual systems. Perhaps there are great challenges in operationalizing and implementing systems approaches, including understanding non-linear feedbacks, deeper systems structures, and long-term processes [130]. However, the alternative is not sustainable, nor resilient.…”

“…This involves setting time to build relationships, learning, and understanding different sector's needs, and build a common knowledge base and trust [133]. It requires leadership and political will [123,130,134].…”