Umeå, the largest city in northern Sweden, is pushing the boundaries of what municipal climate leadership looks like. With the goal to achieve climate neutrality by 2030, Umeå recognises that ambition alone is not enough. Achieving structural transformation requires more than new technologies. It demands new ways of governing, collaborating, and leading.
That recognition led to the launch of the North Star Pilot Activity, part of the EU's NetZeroCities Pilot Cities Programme. Rather than delivering a predefined set of technical solutions, the Pilot aims to transform the underlying governance capacity of the city by testing new tools, processes, and relationships that enable coordinated, adaptive, and systemic climate action across sectors and institutions.
A core element of this approach is the training and capacity-building programme Leading Transition Together. Rather than treating leadership as the domain of a few, the programme asks: How do we create the conditions for many actors to lead together? The result is not a conventional course, but a platform for cultural and institutional transformation, one that redefines how cities can build enduring capacity for change from within.
Even in a relatively advanced city like Umeå, with strong renewable energy infrastructure, district heating, and a co-developed Climate Roadmap, climate action was being constrained by fragmented governance, siloed institutions, and the absence of a shared transition mindset.
The city responded by embedding capacity building at the heart of its Pilot. Leading Transition Together is designed not to teach technical content, but to equip people across the city system with the skills, relationships, and reflexivity needed to lead in complexity. The programme supports transition at four interlinked levels:
- Cross-sectoral governance and coordination: Municipal departments, universities, local businesses, and civil society actors are brought together in structured settings to co-develop responses to real challenges. This cross-pollination builds trust and aligns action across boundaries.
- Deepening Transition Literacy: Participants, including civil servants, elected officials, researchers, and business leaders, develop a shared understanding of transition dynamics, systems thinking, and adaptive leadership. This goes beyond the climate topic and addresses the skills and functions generally needed for navigating complex change processes with real-world interdependences.
- Creating Leadership Infrastructure: Leadership is cultivated horizontally. Through peer learning circles, "sensemaking" workshops, and real-time problem solving, the programme builds capacity not in individuals alone but across relationships and roles. The goal is not a few empowered leaders but a city system that can think, learn, and adapt together.
- Embedding Learning in Governance Practice: Rather than treating training as separate from the work itself, it integrates learning directly into existing processes, such as procurement redesign or spatial planning. Challenges become part of the area for experimentation and learning, and participants impact their organisation's governance structure with a new mindset.
The programme is anchored in principles from transition theory, design thinking, and collaborative governance. It culminated in the Changemakers for Impact forum, an innovation arena bringing together changemakers and leaders from all over Sweden to disseminate learnings and launch a method of how cities can lead local transition capacity-building programmes that connect local actors with broader transition ecosystems, allowing for exchange, visibility, and momentum.
Early results include:
- Improved interdepartmental collaboration and horizontal governance
- Common language and understanding of transition processes and roles within
- A growing internal culture of experimentation and bureaucratic agility
- Solid foundation through a learning platform to keep building transition capacity together with stakeholders
What were the key drivers of the initiative?
- Strong political support anchored in a clear strategic vision for climate neutrality by 2030, which provides consistent direction and motivation across municipal departments.
- Existing governance culture embraces collaboration and innovation. The willingness of diverse stakeholders, from government officials to local businesses and universities, to engage openly enabled knowledge sharing and co-creation. This culture was crucial for overcoming bureaucratic inertia and fostering systemic thinking.
- City's approach to "bureaucratic creativity", combining disciplined project management with a flexible mindset, allowed teams to experiment within regulatory frameworks and iterate quickly on solutions. This balance between agility and accountability is a standout feature, enabling the initiative to move forward effectively and navigate complexity.
- Investment in institutional capacity building: Through the Leading Transition Together platform, the city has developed structured training and collaborative learning formats, such as peer exchange circles and innovation labs. These formats have supported the diffusion of new practices across departments and partner organisations, contributing directly to the Pilot's systemic orientation and improved stakeholder alignment.
- Financial and technical resources from national programs and European networks like NetZeroCities provided vital support, including funding, capacity building, and access to knowledge and tools
What were the challenges and barriers?
- Breaking down administrative silos took consistent time, facilitation, and leadership. Cross-departmental collaboration often requires a shift in both mindset and routines.
- Lack of interoperable data systems made it difficult to align performance monitoring and share learning across pilots.
- Resource constraints, especially staff time and internal capacity, required the city to prioritise actions within the Pilot carefully.
- National regulatory frameworks occasionally limited experimentation, especially in procurement and planning. Umeå addressed this through creative experimentation and dialogue with national authorities.
Lessons learned
The North Star pilot illustrates that for cities to deliver climate neutrality, they must invest in systemic innovation and institutional transformation, not only project-level outcomes.
Key takeaways:
- Investing in people and institutional capacity is as important as funding infrastructure or technologies.
- Leadership is a distributed function; every department, agency, and partner has a role. Empowering them with shared tools and shared understanding is more impactful than central control.
- Systemic innovation is a governance challenge. It requires intentional design of coordination, learning, and accountability structures.
- Co-creation improves legitimacy and outcomes but must be supported by facilitation capacity and internal ambassadors.
- Administrative creativity is a strategic asset. Municipalities that build "black belts in bureaucracy" can navigate constraints without losing transparency or integrity.
Potential for replication
Replication potential is high, especially for cities with the political will to adapt internal structures and enable shared leadership. While Umeå's size and experience offer certain advantages, the principles of adaptive governance, stakeholder co-creation, and capacity building are widely relevant. The programme is supported by a handbook that outlines its structure, learning formats, and facilitation methods. Umeå's Leading Transition Together programme offers a tangible, rigorous model for cities ready to face that truth. It doesn't promise instant results, but it does offer a way forward: not through lone heroes, but through shared leadership, mutual learning, and institutional courage.
Replication is already happening within Umeå. The city has developed a "Ways of Working" framework to embed methods from the Pilot into everyday operations across its municipal companies. This framework evolves as new practices emerge, with regular updates shared at Executive Management Team meetings to support decision-making and uptake.
Umeå's experience shows that the real impact of a pilot depends on how well its innovations are integrated through consistent use, internal ownership, and alignment with broader city priorities.
Photo credits: Nathalie Hjalmarson (Umeå kommun) & Calle Bredberg