Governance recommendations

Developing a theory of change makes working on better governance for transformations much easier. It makes your assumptions on how change should happen through the measures that you take explicit: while every project tends to build on implicit ideas of how change would work, discussing this explicitly makes possible gaps and needs visible. These assumptions can be tested and adjusted, enabling learning about what works better or not quite as well.

A theory of change is especially relevant for developing a vision of change you are working towards, setting the goals and assessing the strategies and instruments to achieve this. It also helps with identifying the actors and institutional structures that are necessary for change to happen. An explicit theory of change puts a spotlight on the process of transformation (who needs to do what and why), understanding what difficulties the current governance landscapes presents and how to work with these. It also makes the uncertainties and questions around the possibilities for change more visible.

Establishing a theory of change essentially involves specifying the vision of your task, translating this into SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals and making this concrete with a set of indicators (on the levels of output and outcome). This allows to map out the process and identify the specific steps towards the envisioned goals – ideally in a corresponding visual the team can go back to, track the progress and adjust as needed. This is a good basis to explore the operational context and what the enabling and hindering circumstances might be for each step of the way.

Finally, discussing this in a team and with stakeholders already improves the outlook of your efforts by clarifying the understanding of the work, sourcing knowledge and ensuring support to a specific vision.

Urban planning is inherently interconnected, making it essential to understand how your action area or task is linked with various topics and sectors. Insights and expertise from relevant sectors such as environment, planning, transport, and social affairs, as well as from different governance levels, help to better understand the underlying issues and develop effective solutions, thereby enriching the theory of change. Mapping the relevant areas and identifying where these inputs can be most beneficial at different stages of the process can significantly strengthen your governance approach.

Ensuring that the methods of involving other units are both resource-efficient and results-oriented helps sustain collaboration. Approaches may include direct participation, for example cross-departmental workshops, joint planning sessions and working groups as well as consultation through targeted surveys, feedback rounds or departmental interviews, ad hoc exchanges, and requests for input. The choice of method should be purposeful and tailored to the specific stage of the process.

As municipal action often aims at long-lasting structures, it should explicitly consider potential future developments when establishing goals and strategies for change. Testing envisioned measures against different scenarios can help ensure that strategies remain effective in the face of uncertainty and changing circumstances. It can also help you explore how the instruments can be adapted in the face of change.

Specifically, you can assess how the proposed measures and instruments align with existing long-term municipal strategies, regional development plans or sectoral forecasts or engage in scenario development (e.g. through joint scenario planning sessions, structured adaptation frameworks). It is essential to consider climate scenarios in planning processes and to ensure that particularly long-lasting structures—such as infrastructure, buildings, and broader aspects of urban development like neighbourhood planning and transport concepts—are designed to be climate-proof.

You can discuss mechanisms to address uncertainties and adapt your strategies, such as regular reviews of goals and indicators, specific expert bodies that can adjust the measures, flexible budgeting arrangements.

The question of who should be involved is central for effective transformational governance of any municipal endeavour. It is often already managed well, as the municipal level actively collaborates with civil society, social and education organisations, urban professionals/experts/academia and other municipalities on a variety of topics. At the same time, some transformational areas require exploring new collaboration arrangements and consultation modes that are tailored for this specific task.

Possible points to consider, depending on how well-developed your stakeholder collaboration modes are, include:
 

• Stakeholder mapping to identify all the relevant actors in the area in question, grouping them, e.g.
  • Based on sector: governmental actors, civil society, the private sector; based on their influence on your area of work (from veto players to one who might need to be informed only)
  • Explore what existing networks can contribute to the achievement of the envisioned transformation.
• Field analysis to familiarise yourself with the stakeholders’ activities (programmes, objectives, missions, projects)
  • Seek to understand the goals, perspectives and needs of as many local and regional stakeholders as possible and identify common interests, identify where your goals naturally align with other stakeholders to increase buy-in for your goal, collaboration and implementation efficiency;
  • Map the relationship between different stakeholders (formal cooperation, other formal relationship, informal relationship; us symbols to identify positive and challenging relationships)
  • Maintain a regular awareness of tools and initiatives used by relevant non-public actors, e.g. through annual reviews as part of the stakeholder analysis (to understand ongoing activities and identify opportunities for collaborative approaches).
• Create and maintain relevant collaboration modes, identifying suitable interaction formats for specific needs, including: 
  • Choose formats based on the characteristics of the target groups, engagement objectives and mutual benefits, while using the opportunities for regular personal contact, e.g. events, network meetings, to maintain network effectiveness. Scale interaction intensity according to specific needs:
    • information exchange: e.g. regular network meetings, thematic round tables, quarterly business breakfasts, annual stakeholder conferences
    • (regular) coordination: e.g. monthly updates, department updates, knowledge sharing, brief check-ins; structured consultations, thematic working groups, regular coordination meetings)
    • active collaboration: consultation on planned actions, participatory decision making, joint project management / implementation partnerships, joint problem-solving / co-creation / design thinking workshops
  • Provide clear, accurate and up-to-date information through appropriate platforms to facilitate informed collaboration and innovative solutions. This helps establish mutually beneficial and effective interactions. Assess if there are easy channels for external actors to contact the city administration on the issue in question, and consider establishing one, if there are not. 
• Maintaining stakeholder relationships requires efforts and should therefore be planned for explicitly, defining responsibilities for this within the main team and allocating respective resources.

When mapping the stakeholder landscape, learning about their perspectives and thinking about fruitful and efficient collaboration, your theory of change provides key information. It will help you see where you might need input or support and what form it should take. Stakeholder collaboration can help overcome some of the barriers and gaps identified in terms of alignment of governance levels (e.g. EU stakeholders partially stepping up for lack of national alignment) or of sectors as well as in terms of instruments (e.g. non-government actors supporting certain practices when governmental actors cannot legislate).

For every public action, it is key to identify population groups that are especially vulnerable and/or underrepresented (e.g. elderly, low-income, people with disabilities, minorities). These groups tend to overlap but might also be different, e.g. while elderly people might be more vulnerable, there perspectives and needs might be well-represented and understood, while it might be the other way around for migrant communities. The impacts of envisioned actions on different population groups should be systematically assessed, with particular attention to vulnerable communities. This is a basis to analyse what an equitable distribution of benefits looks like (it might mean some groups need more attention or a different approach) and helps prevent unintended negative consequences.

When planning your task, it might be useful to establish specific procedures of including diverse perspectives to make sure the differentiated impacts remain on your radar. For this, consider ways to involve these groups throughout the process, systematically and on a regular basis. Methods can encompass direct participation such as participatory budgeting, community workshops, focus groups, online consultations, written feedback, or alternative methods (usually less resource-intensive) such as customer journey mapping, persona-method, social impact assessments, representative surveys. Choose suitable formats depending on the process phase and the input needed: direct engagement (focus group discussions, community forums, regular consultations, co-creating formats), representative input (advocacy group meetings, feedback from social service providers), research (e.g. questionnaires, interviews). 

Not all public action is suitable for private sector support; however, it is always worthwhile to explore the perspectives of businesses to avoid blind spots and better understand their interests. These interests may align with public objectives, creating opportunities for synergies with businesses, associations, and financial institutions. The private sector can provide valuable insights into potential conflicts of interest and help shape actions, so they are more compatible with business activities. By developing a deeper understanding of private sector perspectives, municipalities can design frameworks that attract and facilitate financial or other support to community initiatives, while safeguarding public benefit through appropriate oversight mechanisms.

Such collaboration can take the form of formal partnerships (e.g. public-private partnerships, joint funding schemes, cooperation agreements) or informal arrangements (e.g. voluntary participation programmes, support initiatives, awareness campaigns). When involving the private sector in stakeholder processes, cooperation formats can be jointly selected based on shared objectives and implementation capacity, with a focus on practical solutions that benefit both public and private partners. Furthermore, municipalities can assess their scope to establish rules and incentives that encourage sustainable solutions — for example, by incorporating such requirements into permitting procedures or offering preferential treatment.

Multiple levels of governance shape urban sustainability action—for example, by providing access to funding—but can also present barriers when higher-level regulations do not align with local needs. Mapping the relevant rules, regulations, and responsibilities across different political levels (local, sub-national, national, and EU) is a valuable exercise for identifying both challenges and opportunities.

With this picture in mind, urban practitioners can actively participate in existing coordination frameworks between levels of government (e.g. regional planning committees, state-local working groups, EU Urban Agenda partnerships) and use networking opportunities (e.g. thematic conference with relevant national / regional / European officials). Where frameworks do not yet exist, you can explore how to initiate structured dialogue on your topics through municipal associations or regional bodies. Suitable participation formats can vary based on relevance and resources, from individual liaisons at higher governance levels to regular committee meetings to formal multi-level coordination processes.

Based on your theory of change, that is, your vision of change and your assumptions of how this can be achieved, you can analyse what instruments are needed and which are already available. A balanced mix of measures is often most effective, with actions that complement one another through a mutually supportive interaction of different instruments. These may include informational tools (such as awareness-raising campaigns and educational initiatives), partnership arrangements (such as cooperation frameworks), economic incentives (such as grants and taxation), legal regulations (such as mandatory standards and bans), and strategic approaches (such as planning guidance and action plans). These instruments can also be introduced gradually, depending on what is feasible within a given timeframe and how a selection of measures can be progressively expanded to address new topics.

Existing instruments—such as building codes, zoning regulations, public-private partnership frameworks, and educational guidelines and programmes—can serve as effective levers for integrating sustainability considerations. In addition, the actions, measures, and instruments implemented by actors outside the municipality can provide important entry points for promoting transformation within the field.

Involving different municipality units, civil society and the private sector in discussing what instruments work well and what might be missing can offer a more comprehensive picture and help source innovative ideas. Available best practice from across Europe as well as from your networks can offer a starting point for these discussions. 

When considering which existing instruments and measures to enhance or add, it is valuable to focus on how they can drive innovation, as this is a key catalyst for transformation. Attention should be given to the elements—either through new initiatives or by adapting existing instruments—to promote and facilitate innovative thinking and experimentation among both public and private actors. This might include knowledge-sharing and exchange formats, regular idea competitions, cross-sectoral collaboration, and co-creation with end users. You can highlight the question of fostering innovation in your stakeholder consultations to explore their thinking and harness their experience on the matter.

Once the tasks and the necessary steps are clear, it is important to specify and communicate the precise roles and responsibilities of all relevant units. This ensures that everyone understands their part in the process. Consider organising a joint kick-off discussion to clarify these roles, as well as regular ‘stop-and-reflect’ meetings to assess collaboration and progress. Support these efforts with accessible documentation of key procedures and workflows. Strive for structures that are both clear and flexible, able to accommodate routine operations as well as unexpected challenges. Assess how existing structures—such as regular meetings, committees, and designated positions—can be utilised effectively, and determine when new structures may be necessary.

Ensuring that tasks are supported by adequate financial means is a common challenge for municipalities, that often need to bring budgets for activities together from diverse sources. This requires regular review mechanisms to monitor and adjust resources as necessary, thus maintaining financial flexibility. If there is no specific budget line assigned to your task, screening the options of financing parts of the activities under other budget lines, existing project funding as well as defining a budget acquisition/allocation strategy or a business case can be first steps.

European platforms and networks for sustainable municipal action can often be a first entry points to find experts in your region that are experienced with different models of financing. The financial aspect can also play a prominent role in stakeholder engagement, serving to gather ideas and foster collaboration. If certain activities can only be budgeted in later phases, developing an overarching vision and a detailed implementation plan—e.g. operationalised as clear procurement guidelines—can help ensure the project remains consistent and coherent.