Experiences in urban governance for sustainability: the Constructive Dialogue in Swedish municipalities

The objective of this paper is to analyse the Constructive Dialogue, an initiative for collaborative and integrated urban governance for a sustainable built environment. The dialogue processes, implemented in six Swedish cities in 2004–2009, involved various actors and many types of initiative. Designed as a meta-analysis based on existing evaluations and supplementary interviews, this study examines experiences in capacity building in terms of building relationships, enhancing knowledge, and mobilisation. The study also considers achieved outcome in terms of sustainability, and specifically in terms of environmental aspects. The results show that the collaborative processes to promote relationship building were highly appreciated and that processes of knowledge exchange and knowledge enhancement were seen as quite successful. Consequently, an important result was the enabling of faster processes for urban planning to facilitate the process of urban densification. However, capacity building in terms of mobilisation for a sustainable development was seen to be less successful; the results show that the capacity of the Dialogue to enable mobilisation around sustainability issues through the creation of common visions and goals was weak. The best result was seen in Malmö where the Constructive Dialogue resulted in a shared sustainability agreement which was applied in the development of a new construction site. However, limitations were the difficulties in setting ambitious goals and the lack of knowledge and experience to meet the goals set in the agreement. The study indicates a difficulty in simultaneously considering process and environmental concerns and a tension between consensus and cutting-edge solutions. The study also illustrates the need to further develop processes for urban governance for sustainability.

► Collaborative planning is used to further urban environmental governance in Sweden.
► Through this, relations, knowledge and potentially mobilisation can be fostered.
► It proved difficult to simultaneously attend process and environmental concerns.
► Projects including collaboration among different building developers show potential.
► Challenges remain in formulating ambitious agreements and ensuring compliance.