This paper brings new insight on practices that enable planning processes concerning urban green landscapes (everyday landscapes) to move beyond the somewhat deadlocked conflict between conservation and development. The empirical basis is four planning processes in Norway and Sweden illuminating the following research questions: How is the tension between densification and conservation in everyday landscapes handled in concrete planning processes? Is it possible to identify practices that create opportunity for viable compromises between development and conservation interests? The analysis identifies the core position of expert knowledge in creating a basis for compromise in political processes. Furthermore, green structure as a coherent and basic entity in planning is emerging as a decisive force in local discourse held by the civil society, public authorities, and developers alike. I argue that these elements contribute to create viable compromises on the future development of everyday landscapes, thus functioning as building bricks in creating more agonistic planning practices.
This article nuances the picture given in current research of Swedish policy implementation and planning as consistent and predictable, and Norwegian policy implementation and planning as more unpredictable and fragmented. It does so by adding a discussion of the sources of legitimacy in each of the two national settings, arguing that each system has its distinct pros and cons. The Swedish planning system and local plan practices rest more firmly on a hierarchical mode of governance which is strong on operational efficiency, but suffers from a weaker sense of ownership to the plan outcome among private and civil society actors. In the Norwegian planning system and local plan practices, a combination of hierarchical and interactive governance measures, boasts a broader anchorage and resource division among public, private and civil society actors. However, this system experiences a lower operational efficiency due to the willingness to reconsider former decisions in order to find a viable compromise among different stakeholders in local plan processes, as well as stronger fragmentation due to the privatization of Norwegian detail planning. The empirical basis of the article is: a comparison of the two countries' plan legislation in terms of the inclusion of non‐public actors in plan provision and plan formulation; and four case studies of planning processes concerning the future use of an urban green area.
In the Scandinavian countries, the regional level of governance is neither the locus of large-scale policy reforms nor a significant provider of welfare to citizens. Nevertheless, it has some important policy tasks in the area of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. These policy areas are rife with wicked and unruly problems that combine cognitive uncertainties with the risk of political conflict and stalemate. Dealing with these problems requires the construction of network arenas in which a range of public and private actors can collaborate in order to find innovative solutions to common problems. The paper analyses the efforts of Norwegian regions to enhance collaborative innovation through the formation of interactive governance arenas. It compares three different policy areas in order to better understand how different forms of interactive governance enhance collaborative innovation for economic, social and environmental sustainability. The ultimate goal is to assess the ability and potential of Norwegian regions to solve wicked and unruly problems through collaborative innovation.
In: Torfing , J & Hofstad , H 2015 , ' Collaborative innovation as a tool for environmental, economic and social sustainability in regional governance ' , Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration , vol. 19 , no. 4 , pp. 49-70 .
In the Scandinavian countries, the regional level of governance is neither the locus of large-scale policy reforms nor a significant provider of welfare to citizens. Nevertheless, it has some important policy tasks in the area of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. These policy areas are rife with wicked and unruly problems that combine cognitive uncertainties with the risk of political conflict and stalemate. Dealing with these problems requires the construction of network arenas in which a range of public and private actors can collaborate in order to find innovative solutions to common problems. The paper analyses the efforts of Norwegian regions to enhance collaborative innovation through the formation of interactive governance arenas. It compares three different policy areas in order to better understand how different forms of interactive governance enhance collaborative innovation for economic, social and environmental sustainability. The ultimate goal is to assess the ability and potential of Norwegian regions to solve wicked and unruly problems through collaborative innovation. ; In the Scandinavian countries, the regional level of governance is neither the locus of large-scale policy reforms nor a significant provider of welfare to citizens. Nevertheless, it has some important policy tasks in the area of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. These policy areas are rife with wicked and unruly problems that combine cognitive uncertainties with the risk of political conflict and stalemate. Dealing with these problems requires the construction of network arenas in which a range of public and private actors can collaborate in order to find innovative solutions to common problems. The paper analyses the efforts of Norwegian regions to enhance collaborative innovation through the formation of interactive governance arenas. It compares three different policy areas in order to better understand how different forms of interactive governance enhance collaborative innovation for economic, social and environmental sustainability. The ultimate goal is to assess the ability and potential of Norwegian regions to solve wicked and unruly problems through collaborative innovation.
Artikel 3In the Scandinavian countries, the regional level of governance is neither the locus of large-scale policy reforms nor a significant provider of welfare to citizens. Nevertheless, it has some important policy tasks in the area of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. These policy areas are rife with wicked and unruly problems that combine cognitive uncertainties with the risk of political conflict and stalemate. Dealing with these problems requires the construction of network arenas in which a range of public and private actors can collaborate in order to find innovative solutions to common problems. The paper analyses the efforts of Norwegian regions to enhance collaborative innovation through the formation of interactive governance arenas. It compares three different policy areas in order to better understand how different forms of interactive governance enhance collaborative innovation for economic, social and environmental sustainability. The ultimate goal is to assess the ability and potential of Norwegian regions to solve wicked and unruly problems through collaborative innovation.
Many rural councils are in favour of dispersed low density housing as it takes advantage of a country location. They are likely however to increasingly come into conflict with the planning system and with governmental planning policies which favour a planned and dense development. We discuss the degree to which six rural councils on the urban edge have developed dispersed housing as a strategy and how this is addressed in their planning. Five of them have strategies for dispersed housing and used local planning as a means of realizing this goal. Nevertheless, only two had proactive plans to address this strategy. Despite governmental policy to ban dispersed housing, such areas are identified in negotiations between local and regional authorities who then subvert institutional barriers. We conclude that while central planning policy does not seem to constrain dispersed housing, local planning does. ; The paper is published by the European Journal of Spatial Development (EJSD). The previous version of the journal was host by Nordregio.
This article has a twofold aim. First, inspired by collaborative governance theory, the article develops an analytical framework built around three ideal co-creation strategies utilized by city governments for building capacity and addressing urban climate solutions. Second, this co-creation framework is applied to a comparative case study of climate governance in two climate-ambitious Scandinavian cities, Copenhagen and Oslo, to illustrate the role of co-creation as an approach and tool for urban climate governance. The comparative analysis reveals how the two cities navigate differently within a polycentric ecosystem of actors depending on a variety of contextual factors and whether climate responses are geared mainly towards assembling and aligning public, private business or citizen actors, respectively, for collaborative efforts. The findings suggest that both cities combine two ideal co-creation strategies, a whole of government strategy with an externally focused stakeholder strategy, while neither of the cities has adopted a full-fledged externally focused civil society co-creation strategy. The findings have implications for co-creation theory and urban climate leadership. In both cities, the benefits of co-creation are found to depend on support from both conducive institutional design and new forms of public leadership. Over time, leadership has started to congeal into a distinctive type of co-creational leadership based on both hands-on and hands-off tools and instruments in climate responses. The findings suggest that a co-creation approach benefits the debate on citizen participation in climate governance as it brings a nuanced understanding of the multiple roles that citizens can play in relation to both public and private services and business actors; as residents, consumers, climate agents, as well as voters with rights and responsibilities who can provide the city leadership with legitimacy but also oppose climate action. ; This work was supported by The Research Council of Norway under Grant 270668. ; publishedVersion
In: Hofstad , H , Sørensen , E , Torfing , J & Vedeld , T 2022 , ' Designing and leading collaborative urban climate governance : Comparative experiences of co-creation from Copenhagen and Oslo ' , Environmental Policy and Governance , vol. 32 , no. 3 , pp. 203-216 . https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1984
This article has a twofold aim. First, inspired by collaborative governance theory, the article develops an analytical framework built around three ideal co-creation strategies utilized by city governments for building capacity and addressing urban climate solutions. Second, this co-creation framework is applied to a comparative case study of climate governance in two climate-ambitious Scandinavian cities, Copenhagen and Oslo, to illustrate the role of co-creation as an approach and tool for urban climate governance. The comparative analysis reveals how the two cities navigate differently within a polycentric ecosystem of actors depending on a variety of contextual factors and whether climate responses are geared mainly towards assembling and aligning public, private business or citizen actors, respectively, for collaborative efforts. The findings suggest that both cities combine two ideal co-creation strategies, a whole of government strategy with an externally focused stakeholder strategy, while neither of the cities has adopted a full-fledged externally focused civil society co-creation strategy. The findings have implications for co-creation theory and urban climate leadership. In both cities, the benefits of co-creation are found to depend on support from both conducive institutional design and new forms of public leadership. Over time, leadership has started to congeal into a distinctive type of co-creational leadership based on both hands-on and hands-off tools and instruments in climate responses. The findings suggest that a co-creation approach benefits the debate on citizen participation in climate governance as it brings a nuanced understanding of the multiple roles that citizens can play in relation to both public and private services and business actors; as residents, consumers, climate agents, as well as voters with rights and responsibilities who can provide the city leadership with legitimacy but also oppose climate action.
Abstract Cities have emerged as important agents and sites in climate governance interventions, experimentations and networks. Drawing upon two strains of climate governance and collaborative governance literature, respectively, this article adopts a polycentric approach to the analysis of Oslo's urban climate governance. It unpacks the relationships between urban leadership, climate goal-setting and institutional design, and reveals how these variables condition the employment of a combination of integrative and interactive governing instruments that foster both self-governance and co-creation in climate responses. The article argues that broad and long-term political support facilitates the adoption of ambitious climate goals, utilization of regulatory powers, and the design and operations of innovative hybrid mixes of integrative and interactive governing instruments. The hybrid combination of instruments is what provides the basis for synergistic, predictable and dynamic forms of self-governance and co-created linkages among public and private 'units' within the wider urban climate governance ecosystem. Trans-local and transnational networks play an important role in building such capacities for urban climate governance. Local processes of co-creation and networked experimentations are 'scaling up' to change policies at city, national and international levels. The empirical observations from Oslo have implication for theories of polycentric urban climate governance and for the promise and limitations of cocreation in the climate arena. The analysis draws upon qualitative interviews with close to 50 public and private stakeholders and policy document studies. KEYWORDS co-creation, experimentations and scaling, integrative and interactive governance, leadership, polycentric urban climate governance ; publishedVersion