Climate Leadership: Developing Innovative Strategic Tools to Improve the Partnership Mode of Planning

Abstract

Cities are considered to have a pivotal role in climate transition, by currently taking the lead in pursuing goals of resilient, low-carbon urban development. This chapter discusses how strategic planning tools are used in concert with more general steering instruments when performing climate leadership in a “forerunner” city, the City of Oslo. The chapter uses a theoretical framework highlighting governing by authority, provision, self-governance and enabling, and finds that strategic planning tools frame a comprehensive and holistic system in which all four governing modes are represented and which helps to guide political steering and decision-making at the same time as it gives leeway for the innovation needed for climate transition.