It is clear that there are different pathways for working on and towards sustainable urban development at the local level. Sustainable urban development is evidently being tackled within the planning profession already today. However, ensuring sufficient capacity and tools to achieve the relevant goals poses a challenge. As our case studies clearly show, the municipalities need support for their work. Simultaneously, there are indications that the state or nationwide stakeholders also want to exert influence and contribute to steering local development through their initiatives. If both of these objectives align with each other, implementation becomes easier, as seen in the example from Iceland.
On the other hand, there are different perspectives on the importance of detailed governance by external actors, such as state intervention, and municipal self-governance, particularly in spatial planning and land use issues. While planning systems in the Nordic countries seldom provide the state with a strong mandate to influence local development, there are still possibilities and various formal ways to make an impact. We can observe that the national support initiatives offer another means to guide local development. The question is what the purpose is, which needs are being met and what the objectives of the national support initiatives are. We can see that increased collaboration and improved communication between the municipality and the state, as well as other actors involved, can be facilitated by various partnership approaches that emphasise inclusivity. Furthermore, when national support initiatives focus on providing inspiration for local strategic spatial planning, as in the Swedish case, they make an input without the state exerting influence in matters of detail.
That leads us to understand national support initiatives as a complementary tool to spatial planning and planning systems, with the aim of supporting sustainable urban development processes and projects. They take various forms, which may or may not be directly related to spatial planning. Perhaps the overall perspective and outcome are of greater importance in this context. There is potential for legislation or state intervention to be improved through collaboration and lessons learned from national support initiatives. It is important to see these initiatives as a process of vertical collaboration that can exert an influence both upwards and downwards. However, it is important to emphasise that there is an imbalance in terms of which municipalities have access to and are granted support for such projects within each Nordic country. Municipalities are also differently placed when it comes to in-house capacity and competences to apply for funding in the first place.
It is thus important to consider what form of support is most appropriate and what purpose each type of support serves. While the design of support can influence the pathways municipalities take, overly strict control does not encourage municipalities to take advantage of such support. Therefore, it is essential to find a balance in state-municipal governance and consider how national support initiatives can bolster existing local initiatives aimed at sustainable urban development. That leads us to the following recommendations:
A more formal and institutionalised way of obtaining government funding for sustainable urban development projects at the local level should be developed in some countries. That could level the playing field for municipalities with varying resources, knowledge and lobbying capabilities. In other countries, capacity building – including training and resources – can be provided to help municipalities navigate support options and apply for them. It is beneficial to create platforms providing information about support for sustainable urban development and to make municipalities aware of upcoming calls well in advance.