Part II of this report explores the policies, strategies and tools Nordic cities use to pursue climate neutrality through spatial planning. It is organised into five subchapters, one for each Nordic country. For each country chapter, the analysis highlights two case study cities: one identified as a frontrunner (Aarhus, Tampere, Reykjavík, Trondheim and Lund) and the other as a striver (Vejle, Oulu, Kristiansand and Växjö). For each case study, we apply our conceptual framework (see Figure 3) to demonstrate how an institutional perspective can shed light on the diverse challenges that Nordic cities face in their efforts to achieve climate neutrality.
For each case study, we first present the overarching local climate strategies and key policies for the three sectors: land use, transport and buildings. Second, we apply a multilevel governance perspective to discuss local policy capacity, assessed through financial dependence, regulatory autonomy and governance tensions at both the vertical and horizontal levels. We then go on to explore how institutional capacity – i.e. knowledge resources, relational resources and mobilisation capacity – affects local climate efforts. Each country chapter concludes with an overview of the key challenges in achieving climate neutrality, along with broader implications and potential solutions.