The Nordic countries share many cross-sectoral targets at the national level to meet ambitious environmental, social, sustainable, and innovative development goals and targets. These require action to be taken in city regions and urban areas. However, in the context of spatial planning, central governments in the Nordic countries often have limited ability to influence local and regional level priorities. Especially when it comes to regulating land-use and accelerating policy uptake for sustainable urban development.

As the Nordic region seeks a greener, more competitive, and socially sustainable future, understanding the diversity of ongoing national interventions and mechanisms in local and regional land use and spatial planning is needed. The focus on Nordic national support initiatives is therefore to understand both the regulative and national support aspects (top-down) and the actual needs (bottom-up) to achieve national cross-sectoral targets as these relate to green and inclusive urban development. This policy brief presents a mapping of the relevant initiatives across the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden).

For the purposes of this Nordic initiative, national support initiatives are broadly defined as: “Initiatives that support sustainable urban development efforts through funding mechanisms from a nationwide stakeholder (e.g. ministries, foundations, agencies) to local level stakeholders, such as municipalities. The funding may encourage or lead to partnership networks and multilevel collaboration that enhances local level efforts in achieving national sustainable urban development targets.”

Why are national support initiatives relevant to Nordic people, places, and planning? Research has observed that strategic shifts in recent decades have led to the introduction of planning instruments that complement the formal spatial planning system structures. These can include investment-oriented and agreement-based policies. The Nordic countries strive for implementation of this with varying degrees of success as these emerging planning approaches sometimes limit or challenge conventional development processes or other local urban priorities. 

Additional national-level initiatives have therefore been considered necessary to influence and support Nordic municipalities and regions toward green and a more socially inclusive urban development. In the Nordic countries, this happens either through other sector policies at the national level, such as transportation, or through other initiatives and funding programmes, even though these can alter the conditions for local-level planning. Broadly speaking, there are three ways where the national level influences local-level spatial planning, namely through legislation, financial mechanisms,  and recommendations/guidelines (Figure 1). Many of the implementation responsibilities lie with municipalities, who have decision-making power on a range of local development issues.