Author: Maija Federley (VTT), Zarrin Fatima (VTT)
Editted by: Beatriz MartĂnez (UPM)
Together for climate-neutral cities!
Viable Cities is a Swedish strategic innovation programme for climate neutral and sustainable cities. The programme collaborates with 23 Swedish municipalities and five government agencies to accelerate the climate transition in the initiative Climate Neutral Cities 2030 - and with the tool Climate City Contract 2030.
It is jointly funded by Vinnova, the Swedish Energy Agency and Formas, and it is coordinated by The Royal Institute of Technology, KTH.
Source: Viable Cities Youtube Channel
Viable Cities sees climate change as a symptom of structural problems in the economy and social systems. The scale of the challenges we face as a civilization will bring many governments to make significant investments in transition (so-called Transitional Capital, e.g. Green Deal for Europe).
The purpose of Viable Cities is to create transformative systemic change based on the mission of Climate Neutral Cities 2030 with a good life for all within the boundaries of the planet. The mission implies that the climate transition of cities should take place from a broad perspective, where social, ecological and economic sustainability are simultaneously considered.
The programme has been initiated before the launch of EU Mission Climate-neutral Cities by 2030, and it provides relevant models, cases and learnings for the implementation of the Mission. ”Viable Cities now functions as a European ”living lab” for the EU Green Deal initiative on climate-neutral cities. Other countries want to follow suit, and we have a good dialogue with several of them.” (Allan Larsson, Apr 23 2021)
An innovative approach
Viable Cities takes a holistic approach to sustainable urban development. This means that they assume that everyone in society must be involved in order to make the necessary changes: entrepreneurs and researchers, politicians and civil servants, organizations and ordinary people. They believe that it is particularly important for citizens to be involved in the work if it is to succeed, and that digitization and digital tools can contribute to the major change in various ways.
The initiatives in Viable Cities are based on a mission-oriented approach where key initiatives are Climate City Contract 2030, mission infrastructure for coordination and support, system demonstrators for experimentation and implementation, and Transition Lab for orchestration and reflexive learning.
To enable transformative systems change, Viable Cities is building a mission infrastructure to support:
- New forms of governance and management in quadruple helix
- New forms of citizen engagement
- New forms of cooperation between the state and municipalities (Klimatkontrakt 2030)
- New forms of coordination in financing climate investments in cities
- New ways to support policy development and decision-making processes through knowledge support and digital tools
- New ways to develop, implement, spread and scale up new solutions with a focus on impact
- New forms of reflexive learning and skills development
Viable Cities' largest initiative is Climate Neutral Cities 2030 - a national effort for the local transition journey. Within the initiative, 23 Swedish cities and six national government agencies are currently working on the mission: to create cities that work well for the people who live in them, that are good for citizens, businesses and society's economy - and - that are good for the climate.
Source: Viable Cities Youtube Channel
Main lessons learnt
- Key enablers: Strong commitment on national level to the vision and substantial financing.
- The programme has been well led and it is ambitious.
- It has been successful in making Sweden visible in the context of sustainable cities and has actively connected with EU and policy development.
Main barriers found
In the second phase the programme is recommended to:
- Develop ways to address the links between programme’s individual projects and transformational challenges
- Further clarify positioning of the programme to other initiatives and enhance exchange of good examples and learnings with other relevant initiatives
- Reach out to potential implementing actors (industry, companies) more broadly
- Strenghthen relationships among actual members and its implication in the upcoming events
Potential for reapplication and scale-up
Lessons learnt of the programme are already feeding into NZC and EU Mission “100 Climate-neutral cities by 2030”. The Swedish Climate City Contract has inspired the design of the EU’s Climate City Contract.
Other national strategic innovation programmes can benefit from experiences gained in Viable Cities, that are actively shared, but each programme needs to be tailored for context. E.g. new forms of governance of quadruple helix, coordination of financing climate investments in city and ways to support policy development could provide valuable insights to be replicated.
Photos and videos extracted from the Viable Cities official webpage and Unsplash