The Nordic countries share many cross-sectoral targets at the national level to meet ambitious environmental, social, sustainable and innovative development goals and standards. Those targets require action to be taken in city regions and urban areas. However, when it comes to spatial planning, central governments in the Nordic countries often have limited power to influence local-level priorities, particularly with respect to regulating land use and adopting a range of policies that impact sustainable urban development (see, for example, the ESPON COMPASS project: Nadin et al. 2018; Schmitt & Smas 2019). Many of the responsibilities lie with municipalities, which have greater decision-making power with respect to a range of local development issues.
Land use is governed by spatial planning systems in the Nordic countries (Boverket 2020). The national level often acts in an advisory role, including preparation and approval of legislative frameworks and guidelines. However, the role of the national level differs between the Nordic countries and has continued to change over recent decades, following similar trends seen in western European countries (see, for example, Galland 2012 on the situation in Denmark; Schmitt & Smas 2019). Previous research has also found that western European spatial planning has changed when it comes to national-level involvement, shifting from a focus on reducing inter-regional disparities in the 1960s and 1970s to increased emphasis on achieving sustainable development by means of economic growth measures, often through infrastructure projects, from the late 1980s and onward (c.f. Galland 2012; Galland & Othergrafen 2020).
Planning research in the past decades has also observed a shift in spatial planning from land use planning to strategic spatial planning (see, for example, Albrechts 2006; Healey 2007). Schmitt and Smas (2019) have argued that this shift has “…led to an introduction of other types of planning instruments that are outside of the more formal spatial planning system [and sometimes] contain investment-oriented agreement-based policies, e.g., place-based infrastructures” (Schmitt & Smas 2019: 144). In the Nordic context, those include a range of contractual policies such as agreement-based approaches and packages (see also Smas 2017). Such emerging planning approaches tend to be introduced and implemented by the central government to promote sustainable urban development, especially through coordination and integration of transportation, housing and land use projects (Schmitt & Smas 2019).
Against that background, a range of planning approaches, as well as a range of nationwide support mechanisms (from nationwide private stakeholders to the central government), have emerged in the Nordic countries, often with the aim of supporting and steering municipalities’ efforts to achieve sustainable urban development. This project aims to better understand such initiatives and how they are connected to spatial planning efforts in Nordic municipalities. As identified in the previous phase of this project (see Huynh et al. 2022), the national support initiatives in the Nordic countries range from comprehensive and cross-cutting schemes to targeted and focused ones. They encompass a wide array of measures, from tangible funding mechanisms for hard infrastructure to knowledge networking exchanges and practical tools or “urban labs” for experimentation.
In this report, we examine one national support initiative in each Nordic country, illustrated with learnings from municipal case studies. It is important to keep in mind that we studied various different types of national support initiatives, rather than comparing similar ones. The purpose of that is to shed light on the variety of approaches that can be found in the Nordic countries and to strive for Nordic added value by drawing lessons from a wide range of approaches, enabling them to serve as inspiration or be adopted at either national or local level. We focused on the following research questions: