What we learned building capacities for urban transitions in Sweden and Spain
By: Lena Holmberg, Lund University and Irene Ezquerra, itdUPM
In order to reach the mission of climate neutral cities with a good life for all within the planetary boundaries, really good facilitators are needed. But what characterises good facilitators and how can national platforms create learning opportunities for people facilitating urban transition?
Here we describe the work done in the national platforms citiES2030 (Spain) and Viable Cities (Sweden) to enhance learning together with theoretical underpinnings. We also consider next practice in terms of challenges and future work and end with an invitation to continue the discussion.
What does it mean to be a facilitator, and how to become one?
Given the relational nature of innovation and learning in transitions, the role of the facilitator becomes crucial to guarantee the quality of the interaction between stakeholders, to connect actors and levels of the system, to address communication issues between them, to build a shared vision and to create momentum for change [1–3].
Facilitators are commonly referred to in the literature as intermediaries [4]. Individuals, organisations or networks can play this role [5]. Viable Cities and citiES 2030 are both intermediary organisations with the task of facilitating collaboration between cities, companies, academia, authorities and citizens, in Sweden and Spain respectively.
Viable Cities is a Swedish mission-oriented strategic innovation program. In order to reach the mission “Climate neutral cities 2030 with a good life for all within the planetary boundaries” a vast number of individuals and organisations need to work together. Although Sweden has signed the Paris agreement and has a Climate Law, there is very little direct power that can be used. Instead, facilitation is needed to make collaboration easier at different levels when it comes to tasks such as identifying stakeholders, making sense of situations, setting goals, designing interventions and making them happen.
Viable Cities is an intermediary organisation with the task of facilitating the collaboration between cities, companies, academia, authorities and citizens. It was designed as such from the beginning, with a broad representation of organisations in the board and in the program management team. This team consists of people who have a mixed background from different fields and sectors, and often with a background from facilitating roles. Together with experts from the cities and from research, a learning environment called Viable Cities Transition Lab Forum has been developed, consisting of a great number of different activities, many with a focus on facilitation.
23 cities are engaged in Viable Cities’ programme “Climate Neutral Cities 2030”. They have all agreed to sign a Climate City Contract, where they take on the responsibility to lead the collaborative work of making their city climate neutral. They are encouraged to create Transition Teams within the municipality organisation, collaborating with colleagues from different parts of the administration and from companies owned by the municipality such as energy, waste and water management. In addition, they are also encouraged to create Transition Arenas engaging other stakeholders in the municipality needed to reach the mission. The city is also required to act as an innovation hub for other municipalities, facilitating the transition in the nearby region.
Facilitation is needed in order to design and implement both the transition team and arena, and the collaboration with other municipalities. In some cities this kind of work has been going on for years, with very experienced facilitators who for example know how to create different kinds of collaborative and inclusive meetings with lots of energy ending with concrete decisions and actions. In other municipalities, this task is both new to the organisation and the individuals.
In the spanish context, itdUPM and citiES 2030 are intermediary organisations fostering the transition towards climate-neutral cities.
On the one hand, itdUPM is a non-conventional centre of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid that in recent years has recruited and trained a team of facilitators, aware of the new requirements of a mission-oriented and transformative research. Since 2018, itdUPM has been facilitating Madrid’s multi-stakeholder platform, the so-called Madrid Deep Demonstration.
On the other hand, citiES 2030 is born during the covid lockdown, aiming at providing a space for cities to share knowledge and insights to respond to the urban challenges caused by the pandemic. This space evolved over time to coordinate the application of Spanish cities to the European Mission. At the beginning it was facilitated by itdUPM, but recently this role has been shared with EIT Climate-KIC. In the first phase, citiES2030 is facilitated by three complementary profiles with expertise in climate city contracts, communication and economic models.
At the beginning of the transition process, the facilitation capabilities are usually scarce. To illustrate this point, it is worth mentioning that two persons had to change their position from itdUPM to citiES2030 to provide the platform with such kind of skills.
Indeed, according to the literature, individuals and organisations are unprepared for the coordination challenges that involve multiple stakeholders and levels of decision-making [6–8]. Particularly key in this context are the barriers that municipalities encounter to effectively engage in urban transitions. Some examples are hierarchy and silos [9,10], inflexible legal and operational frameworks [11] or insufficient translocal mechanisms [12] that hinder their response to societal needs and successful experiments from scaling up.
That is why it is desirable that all participants in transition arenas cultivate these capabilities. Especially public servants are called to have a facilitation role in urban transitions in order to align the initiatives of multiple stakeholders, sectors and systems towards a common goal.
Facilitation capabilities can be enhanced through interaction and social learning. Becoming a facilitator requires experience of interaction in complex collaborative environments, since the capabilities involved (listening, communication, etc.) are relational and cannot be acquired theoretically [13,14]. In this sense, we can understand facilitation as an artisanal craft that is learned under the guidance of a mentor. A common metaphor is that of the gardener, which identifies and explores an ecosystem, takes care of it and finds opportunities for experimentation [15].
A fair transition towards climate neutral cities is actually a continuous process of learning-by-doing and doing-by-learning in networks [16,17]. Therefore national and local platforms for cities’ climate neutrality are particularly interesting spaces to cultivate facilitation capabilities, since they provide an enabling environment for multi-stakeholder interaction, creativity and collective construction of knowledge and understanding [18, 19]. That is why Viable Cities and citiES 2030 have to provide stable spaces for trust building, sense-making, questioning and exploring new ideas (thinking out of the box) in a relaxed atmosphere. Also important are thematic (e.g. urban retrofit, nature based solutions, energy efficiency technologies, mobility strategies…) and instrumental (e.g. climate city contract, portfolio management, creation of a transition team, developmental evaluation methodologies…) knowledge and capabilities.
First steps in the approach to capacity building in citiES2030
The itdUPM is facilitating capacity building for city officials both at the national (citiES2030) and the local levels (transition teams and local arenas). In addition, citiES 2030 provides a detailed instrumental and methodological support to the cities in terms of drafting of climate city contracts, establishing a transition team, managing and evaluating a portfolio, communicating, etc.
Although oriented towards public servants, our training programmes usually bring together professionals from different sectors in multi-stakeholder conversations and combine theoretical and practical activities. However, in our experience, theoretical issues should be explained through examples. Although systemic approaches and mission-oriented innovation are useful to understand the ambition of the transition, they may overwhelm the participants, who may react with hostility or a sense of powerlessness. Particularly effective is when practical experiences are used from the municipalities participating in the training and are told by the people directly involved.
Since public servants face many barriers to work with collaborative and systemic approaches, a space for sharing the barriers is necessary at the beginning of the training. However, this space for catharsis should be closed as soon as possible in order to move on to a proactive and constructive reflection. A good practice is to start from what is already being done well in the municipality.
Both itdUPM and citiES 2030 approach training in experimental terms. An evaluation is done after each session, aiming at incorporating improvements from one session to the next, or at the end of the course. It is usually based on a short survey, mixing rating and open text questions. Examples include questions such as ‘How did you feel in today’s session?’, ‘What would be the main ideas of today’s session?’, ‘What was missing?’.
Next two capability building experiences will be described.
The Summer Course for Cities Transition Teams
The Summer Course was a four-day intensive course organised in July 2022 by itdUPM in collaboration with EIT Climate-KIC, and hosted by the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in Santander, Spain. In terms of content, the main objective of the course was to introduce in depth the EU Cities’ Mission to the representatives from the selected Mission Cities in Spain which were leading this process at the City Councils (the Transition Teams under construction). However, it was also the occasion to gather the Spanish Cities and generate momentum around the Mission. Thus this space mainly served a relational purpose: networking, peer-to-peer exchange and sense-making.
The course was co-designed with the cities and had both a theoretical and a practical orientation. The mornings were devoted to theoretical content while the afternoons concentrated on workshops in which the public was divided by city. Five areas of interest for the cities were addressed: policy and governance, local capacity building, social innovation and participation, communication, financing and implementation practices. The workshop sessions allowed for cities to discuss case studies and to raise specific challenges they face to achieve the Mission.
Although the city officials of the selected Spanish cities were the target audience, the course was open to other people interested in urban transitions. This allowed for a richer exchange between actors which are important for the advancement of the Mission.
The cities expressed their desire to establish this course as a recurrent practice of the Spanish Cities Platform, a sort of annual meeting where cities could share their progress and get inspired by others. A new edition will take place in Santander in July 2023, coordinated by EIT Climate-KIC. This experience has inspired NetZeroCities, which will also bring together several European cities in July in Santander for a summer course.
Training programme for Madrid Transition Team
Opening training spaces within municipalities is also necessary in order to build and strengthen transition teams. In this regard, official in-service training of municipalities is a good opportunity to involve new city officials in the climate-neutrality roadmap. This was the case in Madrid City Council, where training was considered the most appropriate mechanism for giving “licence” to city officials to share time and space.
The training was a demand of the Environmental Area of the City Council, which is leading the Madrid Mission. The design and management of the programme was developed by three organisations engaged in local, national and european platforms for cities’ climate neutrality, itdUPM, Dark Matter Labs and Democratic Society, with the support of a representative of the City Council. This support was considered to be crucial to adapt the goals and contents to the particular context of this city. Moreover, a flexible design was also important to adapt to the needs of the group and to take advantage of emerging opportunities (e.g. new topics or different levels of depth).
The course was held over five days, during the morning, at the itdUPM office. The schedule balanced theory and practice. This experience showcased that participants often find theory (systemic and portfolio approaches) overwhelming but practical activities, based on their ongoing projects and experiences, helped them to internalise this way of approaching complexity.
A total of 23 city officers from 17 different areas and districts participated. Diversity was considered a key element for the success of this course. In particular, a mix of “mission leaders” and unconvinced participants was key to unlock resistance to change.
Supporting Urban Transition Facilitators — Lessons Learned from Viable Cities
In order to support the cities and their facilitators, Viable Cities has taken a number of measures that have been developed and refined over time: (a) a training program has been organised, (b) action research is ongoing, © city co-creation opportunities are provided and (d) the program management act as role models.
The Training Programme Accelerera
In Sweden, the need for the public sector to become more innovative has long been identified and a number of measures have been taken to create awareness and increase capacity. A number of city innovation platforms have been funded and supported. However, Viable Cities together with the funding agency Vinnova identified the need for a special support targeting transformative innovation management, which is why a special program, Accelerera, was initiated.
The purpose of this was to support the cities in the “Climate Neutral Cities 2030” programme, but also to drive the development of many more suppliers of that kind of facilitation and competence development within transformative innovation management. The Accelerera program takes departure from the ISO 56000 Innovation Management standard and is based on research with researchers actively involved in the design and delivery. It provides access to a knowledge hub with tools and examples as well as personal coaching in addition to training sessions where the participants practise facilitation. Information has also been provided about the innovation management certification opportunities provided by RISE, one of the core Viable Cities partners.
Action Research
Already from the beginning of the “Climate Neutral Cities 2030” programme, an action researcher, Dr. Gabriella Doci, was recruited to investigate the development of the organisation and management of the implementation of the Climate City Contract using the transition management research framework. She pays special attention to the development of learning infrastructures in terms of deliberate measurements taken to make sure that the transition teams and arenas developed in a good way such as deliberate processes for reflection and onboarding of new team members [20, 21].
Another researcher, Dr. Kateryna Pereverza is looking into tools and models for transformative portfolio approaches at various levels, comparing the work done within Viable Cities and other intermediaries [22, 23]. Such approaches are important facilitation tools for sense-making and learning, putting specific initiatives or projects into a wider context in order to counteract silos.
This research is still ongoing and the results are continuously presented to the 23 cities and packaged in such a way that it can be used in practice by the city facilitators. The cities are also encouraged to provide feedback on the material.
City Co-Learning
With 23 cities in the programme, there are always some cities who are at the front in some areas and others that are lagging a bit behind. This is why Viable Cities provides and encourages many opportunities for the cities to learn from each other: informal breakfast meetings for process managers, gatherings for communication officers, group sessions with a smaller number of cities, information exchange in Slack channels, opportunities to reflect by reading and writing blog posts and so on.
The city process managers are also encouraged to talk to each other directly and invite each other to local events in addition to becoming followers to each other on social media. Examples from the cities are also broadcasted through Viable Cities external communication channels. This way facilitators in different cities can learn from each other in various ways.
Role Models
The Viable Cities program management team always tries to be a good role model for facilitators. Emphasis is placed on listening, involving, connecting, encouraging and being strength-based when designing and implementing events and other activities. Many people in the team have extensive experience in both formal facilitation through organising events and workshops and informal facilitation through networking and communication activities.
One extra important role in the team is the City Coordinator, who is involved in co-designing both informal and formal activities targeting the cities. Many of the workshops are recorded and the material in terms of templates and examples is made accessible in order to make it easier for others to make use of it.
In addition to the activities mentioned above, the initial steps have been taken to create procurement networks, where the municipalities collaborate on defining what kind of facilitation support they would like to have and in some cases also on actually procuring it.
In sum, to become a good facilitator takes time, since it requires a lot of practice in addition to knowledge about the transition process and useful tools and methods. The design of learning environments for facilitators needs to take this into account.
Next Practice for Learning and Capacity Building
Although citiES 2030 and Viable Cities have launched many successful learning initiatives together with amazing partners, there is still much to do when it comes to enhancing learning and capacity building. We would like to take this opportunity to mention a few of the questions that we are facing right now thereby inviting colleagues in other countries to join us in dialogues based on experience, research and ideas.
What kind of practices and routines within national platforms are enhancing learning-by-doing and doing-by-learning?
We have identified the importance of combining learning-by-doing and doing-by-learning as a key concept in our platforms when it comes to supporting the capacity building of facilitators. In addition, we have made an attempt to design learning environments that support this development, as mentioned above. However, we are very interested in learning more about how this can be done in new ways, in order to make the learning deeper and faster. Some specific questions we have are:
- How can the training addressed to municipalities be managed and differentiated in order to avoid them feeling overwhelmed?
- How can value-creating learning approaches be used?
- What kind of research on how to accelerate transformative learning is needed and how can it be organised?
How to produce a “contagion” effect of facilitation capabilities to people and organisations that were not initially playing this role?
Mission-oriented approach is proving to be a powerful mechanism for aligning strategies, actors and sectors towards a common goal. We have identified the crucial role that facilitators play in enabling organisations to work together in the same direction. However, we have also experienced the scarcity of facilitation capabilities, particularly in the organisations that should lead this transformation process. We are therefore interested in how intermediation capabilities (e.g: multi-stakeholder dialogue, systemic approach, long-term thinking…) can be transferred more quickly and at scale to municipalities.
Some specific questions we would like to explore further are:
- To what extent should municipalities take on an intermediary role in the transition to climate neutrality?
- How to cultivate facilitation skills among city officials?
- How can we best facilitate a shift from viewing yourself as a project manager for a rather small and short project to manager for a large-scale transition process?
How to gain comfort and amplify the comfort zone in terms of collaboration in complex ecosystems such as national platforms?
As can be seen from the history of Viable Cities and citiES 2030, these national platforms consist of many partners and stakeholders from different sectors and parts of the country. To some extent the partners are also competing for funding and attention, while at the same time addressing very complex and highly political issues that can make or break careers. Some specific questions we would like to discuss are:
- How to build trust and commitment, which are considered to be crucial for learning in networks?
- When we exchange experiences between countries on this topic, how do we best consider the differences that might have a huge impact on how the national platforms are designed?
How do we know we are doing the right thing?
When working with the task to become climate neutral 2030 time is precious. There is often no time to make long and complex investigations into quality assurance, especially since many recommendations resulting from such an exercise may be irrelevant when published because of the fast pace in practice development. However, excellent learning environments are key to making progress so having some means for quality assurance are important. So far we have identified the following key processes:
- Recruiting experienced people to the program management team with a relevant track record and coming from different backgrounds, and encourage them work together.
- Co-creating many of the activities using a mix of people from intermediaries and the cities, making sure that both content and learning processes become relevant and efficient.
- Encouraging flexibility when organising activities to make sure to adjust them to the participants’ immediate needs.
- Creating a culture of trust and transparency making sure that constructive feedback is provided.
We are very interested in learning more about how other intermediaries supporting cities aiming to become climate neutral 2030 organise their quality assurance processes. This also includes how to involve researchers in this work and how to quicken the pace of the utilisation of their results.
In general, if you are interested in discussing learning and capacity building, please get in touch with us!
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Viable Cities är ett nationellt program inriktat på innovation för klimatneutrala och hållbara städer. I satsningen Klimatneutrala städer 2030 — med verktyget Klimatkontrakt 2030 — samarbetar programmet med 23 städer och sju myndigheter för att snabba på klimatomställningen. Programmet får stöd i en gemensam satsning av Vinnova, Energimyndigheten och Formas. Viable Cities samordnas av KTH. viablecities.se
The article is the result of a reflective dialogue between Irene and Lena during Winter 2022/2023, facilitated by Nayla Saniour, itdUPM.
