Creating Transformative Force? The Role of Spatial Planning in Climate Change Transitions Towards Sustainable Transportation

Abstract

Informed by the concept of strategy making, this paper analyses the ability of spatial planning to support local climate change transitions towards sustainable transportation in two case studies of planning in Swedish municipalities with comparatively high climate ambitions. The analysis shows that the expectations on planning to effect change need to be moderated. Not even in these climate-ambitious municipalities did transportation planning result in strategic reorientation. While climate change was clearly filtered into local strategy making, no new climate frame was established. Rather in goals, it was linked to an overall attractive city storyline. Transportation planners have sought to mobilize force through developing new tools and routines to strengthen the role of climate change. In detailed planning, however, when plans become legally binding, agency in relation to climate change was limited by allowing private actors a pivotal position. Also, tools were used selectively and when settling priorities, climate change was subordinate to economic growth interests. While the planning observed can be regarded as weak, its ability to support climate transition would have been even weaker had it not been linked to the attractive city storyline. Consequently, to facilitate climate transition mobilizing force needs to be generated within the current local implementation structure.

Key Words:

• Climate change
• spatial planning
• transition
• transportation
• strategic reorientation

Acknowledgements

The empirical results presented here stem from the project Climate Change Policy Integration in Local Policy and Planning (CLIPP). The project has been designed, planned and run by Sofie Storbjörk and Mattias Hjerpe, Linköping University, and Karolina Isaksson, Robert Hrelja and Hans Antonson, VTI. We thank our interviewees and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This study was funded by the Swedish Research Council FORMAS (Dnr 242–2011–1599).

ORCID

Robert Hrelja http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9445-784X

Notes

1. Norrland is the Swedish term for the northernmost of the three Swedish regions: Götaland, Svealand and Norrland.