Photo: Artūras Zelenkauskas

What are the next steps for Nordic cooperation on national support initiatives in local urban planning?

In the next phase, the project will address the key challenges and knowledge gaps between national targets and objectives for local planning. The selected national support initiatives will cover a thematic range, which means that a variety of different cases will be selected rather than similar initiatives from all countries. Further, it will also be important to consider the ways in which these initiatives may affect spatial planning at the local level.  Attention will therefore be placed on this area, e.g. through questions such as how has land-use been thought through, or if consultation with local level planners has taken place before the funding programmes were initiated.
The overall objective is to enhance knowledge for and of the relevant Nordic actors, to share lessons learned across the countries and how these may serve as inspirational practices and approaches to adopt, either at the national or the local level.
The selection of case studies in the project’s upcoming phase are based on the following criteria:
  • A variety of different types of national support initiatives, to provide Nordic added value through learning examples
  • Project funding that encourages multi-level governance and multi-level cooperation, in local spatial planning and/or local sustainable urban development
  • Funding: must include national-level involvement, but can be a joint initiative with other stakeholders
  • Clear aim targeting green sustainable urban development (but not initiatives more relevant for other Nordic thematic group projects)
  • Organisational model: what type of collaboration and constellation of stakeholders are involved? (Related to the criteria above, consider models that have worked well)
  • Conflict of interests: Are the selected national support initiative complementing or challenging the spatial planning system at the local level?
  • Methods/uptake: Stories demonstrating obstacles and successes at the national and local level
We propose to investigate the following initiatives in each Nordic country:
Country
Proposed case studies
Themes
Norway
Multistakeholder involvement, spatial planning, building sector, circular economy, partnership network
Denmark
Multistakeholder involvement, housing, social mixing, inclusive cities
Iceland
Spatial planning, transport planning, climate mitigation, sustainalbe development
Finland
Sustainable urban focus, spatial planning
Sweden
Sustainable urban focus, multistakeholder involvement
Table 1. Initiatives proposed for project case studies
Go to content
Nordregio policy brief 2022:7