Database of governance arrangements

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Across Europe there is an inspiring array of experimentation with local governance arrangements for just and sustainable cities.

What is governance? It can be broadly understood as all formal and informal political processes (involving state and non-state actors) that lead to collective action.

On this database, you will find the summaries of results of a study on fruitful governance interventions for sustainable and just city.

So far, we have selected eleven real-word experiments (mostly within EU-funded projects) and developed rich descriptions which detail their governance variables and processes. We have also created a brief governance scenario per case studied. These scenarios share general insights in a narrative style, and we hope that they pique your interest and provide inspiration about what could be possible in your city!

From our review of these examples of initiatives, we have identified enabling governance arrangements, which appear to have helped advance the joint goals of urban sustainability and justice and helped the initiatives come to fruition.

Would you like to get involved? We've asked some questions in the following sections, and you can share your suggestions with us via email to Philipp Spaeth. If you haven't already, please feel free to join the UrbanA Community of Practice.

DISCLAIMER: This page is currently under review! While the rich descriptions and governance scenarios remain the same, we are shifting our approach away from governance ambitions towards what we call governance arrangements. More detail to follow shortly.

Enabling governance arrangements for sustainable and just city

Enabling governance arrangements are elements that we identified as being important for catalyzing initiatives for just and sustainable cities. Looking at a selection of eleven situated governance interventions for sustainable and just cities (as summarized in our scenarios), we asked: “What key elements of governance arrangements enabled those interventions to come to fruition?”

We assume that the enabling governance arrangements that we identified as important in these cases (building on project reports and interviews), can be important for other cases too. However, we do not claim that these potentially generic enablers are the sole factors for bringing interventions to fruition, as the latter will always be embedded in local contexts with place-based factors being important as well.

In order to provide inspiration or even guidance in other contexts, they cannot be defined overly specific or overly broad. Enabling governance arrangements are concrete, fluid and adaptive, transferable; tailored, and generally relevant.

When clicking on one of the enabling governance arrangement A) - D) below, you will learn about the ambition this each enabling governance arrangement as well as about the scenarios and detailed descriptions of governance experiments it relates.

A) Embracing flexibility in project management

B) Creating a comprehensive vision of change

C) Institutionalising intermediaries

D) Committing to a meaningful participation process

E) Tapping into resources of existing community networks and learning

F) Develop resilient, and self-sufficient business models


Which further enabling governance arrangement do you consider crucial on the way towards governance for sustainability AND justice in cities?

Methodology followed

(coming soon)