Strategizing sustainability: The case of River City, Gothenburg

•The paper gives a backstage perspective of sustainability practice.•Sustainability projects tend get stuck in symbolic battles.•The goal of consensus make the struggle for sustainability about practical tasks.•The role of politics in strategy practice need to be discussed further.

This article deals with how sustainable initiatives enfolds in practice by a rich empirical case of the city of Gothenburg in western Sweden. Here a two-year project of drafting vision and strategies for the city was completed with the aim to create a sustainable future city. The article highlights the hidden side of sustainability work and contributes to the growing literature of critical engagement with sustainability practice. The article demonstrates that, despite good intentions to create a sustainable city, practical considerations can hinder agreement on how to act, where one problem is the strive for consensus in a setting in which consensus is not, and should not be, possible. Instead, the risk is that the sustainability work will become mired in symbolic battles as the deadline approaches.