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Political decision-makers need to consider the various challenges and opportunities that climate change can bring, and they must take decisions under high uncertainty to achieve resilient cities. Here, we synthesise the push and pull approaches reported in the literature and employed in practice to achieve sustainable and resilient cities. First, we present a literature review which identified the major research fields on transition theories, frameworks and methods that underpin this concept. We analyse the conditions for change, identify enablers or triggers for change at governance level for transitioning a city towards sustainability and resilience. We discuss the theories, frameworks and methods which can be used to address the urban climate change challenge at city level. Second, we present an empirical approach based on stakeholder participation that we conducted to detect the conditions for change. We report on the design and implementation of stakeholder exercises that helped us detecting the conditions for changes. Third, we combine the information obtained from these stakeholder exercises with that extracted from the literature in order to provide a fuller picture on how stimulate the transition and transformation to achieve sustainable and resilient cities. Based on our literature review and empirical approach, we formulate an integrated conceptual model for transition that enables the design of adaptation (and mitigation) strategies that consider the triggers of change. Uniquely we identified 8 triggers of change, including authority and political leadership, learning from disasters, co-responsibility, increased public-private interface, social participation and the living lab approach to innovation. The proposed model can be applied to the whole city or to a certain sector of the city (e.g. energy). We demonstrate that triggers of change help to overcome planning and implementation barriers and move the socio-ecological and socio-technical systems of any city towards those of a resilient city. ; This work was supported by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme: Grant Agreement No. 308497, Project RAMSES "Reconciling Adaptation, Mitigation and Sustainable Development for Cities", 2012–2017. In addition, this study has received partial funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 653522 (RESIN−Climate Resilient Cities and Infrastructures project).

The Paris Agreement aims to limit global mean temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. This target has wide-ranging implications for Europe and its cities, which are the source of substantial greenhouse gas emissions. This paper reports the state of local planning for climate change by collecting and analysing information about local climate mitigation and adaptation plans across 885 urban areas of the EU-28. A typology and framework for analysis was developed that classifies local climate plans in terms of their alignment with spatial (local, national and international) and other climate related policies. Out of eight types of local climate plans identified in total we document three types of stand-alone local climate plans classified as type Al (autonomously produced plans), A2 (plans produced to comply with national regulations) or A3 (plans developed for international climate networks). There is wide variation among countries in the prevalence of local climate plans, with generally more plans developed by central and northern European cities. Approximately 66% of EU cities have a type Al, A2, or A3 mitigation plan, 26% an adaptation plan, and 17% a joint adaptation and mitigation plan, while about 33% lack any form of stand-alone local climate plan (i.e. what we classify as Al, A2, A3 plans). Mitigation plans are more numerous than adaptation plans, but planning for mitigation does not always precede planning for adaptation. Our analysis reveals that city size, national legislation, and international networks can influence the development of local climate plans. We found that size does matter as about 80% of the cities with above 500,000 inhabitants have a comprehensive and stand-alone mitigation and/or an adaptation plan (Al). Cities in four countries with national climate legislation (A2), i.e. Denmark, France, Slovakia and the United Kingdom, are nearly twice as likely to produce local mitigation plans, and five times more likely to produce local adaptation plans, compared to cities in countries without such legislation. Al and A2 mitigation plans are particularly numerous in Denmark, Poland, Germany, and Finland: while Al and A2 adaptation plans are prevalent in Denmark, Finland, UK and France. The integration of adaptation and mitigation is country-specific and can mainly be observed in two countries where local climate plans are compulsory, i.e. France and the UK. Finally, local climate plans produced for international climate networks (A3) are mostly found in the many countries where autonomous (type Al) plans are less common. This is the most comprehensive analysis of local climate planning to date. The findings are of international importance as they will inform and support decision making towards climate planning and policy development at national, EU and global level being based on the most comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge of local climate planning available to date.