Urban planners can address sustainability by leveraging urban potential for people and nature but face significant challenges in integrating diverse knowledge and facilitating collaboration. Geodesign, as a methodological approach, has the potential to support collaborative urban planning by managing the ‘boundaries’ between diverse knowledge holders. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence and systematic assessment of its contribution to ‘boundary work’. The latter refers to the efforts to navigate the interface between diverse stakeholders engaged in co-producing knowledge for sustainability. This paper aims to evaluate how a geodesign process facilitates knowledge co-production through boundary work and to assess the scientific credibility, political saliency, and procedural legitimacy of its outputs in sustainable urban planning. We adapt and further develop recent conceptual frameworks of geodesign from a boundary work perspective and propose a systematic, adaptable, and replicable framework and protocol for assessing boundary work in future applications. We tested our approach in a case study of a collaborative geodesign process for ambitious urban transformations with nature-based solutions in the Skarpnäck district of Stockholm, Sweden, involving fourteen planning stakeholders in a two-day workshop. The findings indicate that all geodesign steps facilitated enhanced communication by promoting discussions and collective reasoning, although to varying degrees. Participants acknowledged contributions to knowledge co-production and decision-making by mediating between different perspectives and opinions. Data quality was identified as a critical factor affecting perceived credibility. Reservations were expressed regarding the translation function. Recommendations for future applications include co-designing the geodesign process, improving capacity and skills, and facilitating more integrated planning.

A GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is presented to evaluate the suitability of land for the implementation of nature-based solutions (NbS) to enhance carbon sequestration in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Excessive carbon emissions into the atmosphere have caused rapid and profound climate change that needs to be mitigated. The use of NbS has emerged as an effective strategy to sequester atmospheric carbon and improve environmental resilience. This study focuses on identifying the best NbS to maximise carbon sequestration for three environmental zones: urban, peri-urban and agricultural. The analysis identifies optimal locations for three area-specific NbS: street trees, green spaces and buffer strips. The region was divided into 30 × 30 m grid pixels, with each grid cell assigned a value from 1 (least suitable) to 5 (most suitable). The results show that most of the high-quality pixels are located near the main urban centres and along the coastline. These results provide useful information for policy makers and urban planners who can be guided in the strategic implementation of NbS to achieve maximum environmental benefits. The work also includes an individual sensitivity analysis to validate the robustness of the proposed model and a quantitative estimate of the carbon that can be sequestered by these NbS.

Considerable pressure is placed on wind power in Sweden due to the country’s goal of generating 100 % of its electricity from fossil free resources. The aim was to develop the REWIND methodological framework to support wind power planning, built on spatial multi-criteria analysis (SMCA). In addition, the purpose was to develop a conflict score as a novel component of this framework, for handling goal conflicts. This framework includes the scoping, design and evaluation stages. It was applied in a case study of Västernorrland County with extensive involvement of stakeholders throughout the process. 

The conflict score allows a separate analysis of trade-offs between factors, highlighting potential conflicts across the landscape to increase transparency. Thus, users are allowed to decide on a threshold on how much conflict among factors should be allowed for areas to qualify as planning alternatives. Critical issues that will need further attention concern quality and availability of data, creation of representative spatial indicators for the factors, weighting methods, and uncertainty analysis. The REWIND framework is open-ended and allows for further development to provide planning support that gives more control of factors and conflicts to be acceptable in real-world planning. Capacity building involving stakeholders in the design of planning alternatives are crucial. In Sweden, it can promote a more proactive planning process in the municipalities, supported by the regional actors, leading to a more predictable permitting process for developers. This will be useful for inclusive wind power planning in any country, since it is applicable on different scales.

Drawing on examples from the Nordic countries, this article aims to explore the practical application of strategic policy and planning instruments and approaches that facilitate the integration of land use and transport planning and promote sustainable policy measures through collaboration among stakeholders across various governance levels. This research applies a qualitative research design including literature research, interviews, and workshops involving practitioners from the five Nordic countries. In this paper, we present an overview of the planning structure in the Nordic countries, including institutions that govern land use and transport planning. We identify different approaches to bridge the gap between land use and transport planning, such as the Finger Plan in Denmark, MAL in Finland, Concept Studies in Norway, and Strategic Choice of Measures in Sweden. Many of the examples employ informal collaborative approaches among authorities to form a shared vision and seek consensus on a combination of policy measures and actions. The paper examines collaborative approaches in relation to regulatory planning and discusses the role of these processes in advancing integrated land use and transport planning and fostering sustainable urban development.

Background: Wind power is a critical renewable energy technology in efforts to achieve the global climate targets. However, local impacts do occur, which demands careful consideration in planning and permitting. Sweden has setan ambition to triple land-based wind power by 2040, and municipalities play a key role in both the planning and permitting process, due to a planning monopoly and veto power in the permitting process. This calls for an investigationof Swedish wind power governance, with a particular focus on recent trends in municipal wind power planning, how wind power is balanced in relation to sustainability objectives in planning and permitting, and insights frompractitioners regarding their capacities and drivers.

Results: The results show that about two-thirds of Swedish municipalities have conducted wind power planning in some form, but this basis for decision-making has become outdated due to a lack of institutional capacity at the municipal level. Secondly, the study finds that many municipalities perceive that there are insufficient incentives for a continued wind power expansion. Lastly, the study sheds light on a large heterogeneity within wind power planning practice concerning how trade-offs between wind power deployment and other sustainability aspects are handled, as well as a lack of coherence between planning and permitting.

Conclusions: It is concluded that the current state of municipal wind power planning raises questions regarding the legitimacy of municipal decision-making in terms of perceived justice among local inhabitants and highlights the need for updated wind power plans. Moreover, to promote local acceptance in the future, formalised financial compensation and strategic initiatives that enable the localisation of electricity-intensive industry within municipalities with large-scale wind power production can be two key components. The results also highlight the need for additional support at the municipal level, including access to critical competence and relevant knowledge to enable trade-offs between the different sustainability considerations in an informed and balanced manner. Finally, regional dialogue with key actors, such as the military, Sami representatives and grid operators, would facilitate the handling of inter-municipal issues, in particular by fostering co-operation regarding inter-municipal wind sites.

Sweden aims to achieve 100% renewable electricity by year 2040 with a major share expectation from wind. In this context, the national strategy developed for wind power development estimates expected shares from each County. With this increased expectations from each county, Spatial Multi-Criteria Analysis (SMCA) is used as a tool to integrate contributing and conflicting criteria that influence wind energy planning to find sustainable solutions. A majority of studies accommodating larger number of criteria uses Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) or OWA to solve wind farm siting problems. By this, weights obtained from the stake-holders indicating importance of the criteria are used to allow trade-off between criteria to reach a negotiated decision when there are areas not available as in an ideal scenario. Through this opinions of stakeholders from diverse expertise are thus meant to be incorporated in a transparent and democratic way. However, these trade-off may disguise conflicts which need to be handled in a controlled way. 

The REWIND project aims to develop a framework and GIS tools to conduct SMCA for sustainable wind power planning. The study also addresses planning issues that arises when following the standard approach and ways to handle it. 

Two case studies are included in this project with the collaboration of Västernorrland and Västra Götaland Counties. The methodology includes selection of criteria and transformation into a uniform suitability scale. These factors are aggregated through a conflict score, to prevent high trade-offs in later stages.  Secondly, the importance of one factor over the other is obtained from stake-holders through some weighting method. In general, when the number of factors are more than 9, clustering into groups in hierarchical structure (planning tree) is carried out to calculate weights. The basis for the groups varies and the most common way of clustering is based on the three pillars of sustainability. This not only restricts comparison of factors belonging to different clusters, but it also controls the weight distribution indirectly. The symmetricity of the tree and how it impacts final weights are often overlooked by the participants who carry out weighting and their involvement become more or less pointless. To tackle this, the Ranking-Rating (RR) method is developed and used in the framework, where factors are grouped into different level of importance first, then ranked and rated within each group. Finally, the suitability scores of different scenarios are used to identify suitable sites for wind energy planning.

Through this systematic and transparent approach planners are given various options to choose from the decision space with more clear understanding about the trade-offs in a quantified manner.  Moreover rectifying the standard approach where stake-holders can get integrated in the process more effectively can strengthen the strategic planning process and reduce the delays and difficulties during the permitting process. The REWIND methodological framework, also bridges knowledge gaps through integrating and treating diverse factors with stakeholder involvement in useful ways through development the GIS-based tool. The REWIND tool is transferable and can be used for wind power planning on regional and municipal scales. 

Landscape approaches are important for planning of urban sprawl in peri-urban landscapes, continuously emerging in many metropolitan regions. In the case of Stockholm Region, land-take and incremental urbanisation is a continouous process, while the regional development plan has ambitions to steer the overall development in a sustainable direction. This plan contains a green infrastructure effort building on a set of green wedges, mainly serving as support to the needs of the city and suburbs and their citizens. This initiative differ from the later green infrastructure action plan provided by the county administrative board, related to the EU biodiversity strategy and guidelines. The latter has a different approach, mainly targeting biodiversity goals as well as ecosystem services. These approaches differ from each other in several ways while both have unclear roles when it comes to municipal planning on different levels. Furthermore, the municipalities have their own initiatives when it comes to green infrastructure and nature-based solutions and it is not clear how the different planning tiers are linked to each other, to planning and management, and to multifunctional landscapes. The aim of the REPLAN project is to investigate how the different green infrastructure initiatives are linked to planning, to each other on different scales, and whether they can serve multi-functional landscapes when it comes to biodiversity and different ecosystem services. The REPLAN project involves stakeholders and practitioners on different planning levels for co-producing knowledge, methods and strategies for green infrastructure and nature-based solutions to serve as tools for sustainable transition of metropolitan areas and their peri-urban landscapes.

Wind energy plays a vital role to meet growing energy needs and to replace non-renewable energy sources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sweden has set the goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2040 with a major share coming from wind energy. In this context, Sweden has a national strategy for sustainable wind power development, with suggested development shares for each region. However, wind energy development also faces a multitude of ecological and societal impacts that needs consideration. Therefore, wind power planning face major challenges and there is a need for systematic planning support, integrating scientific knowledge and stakeholder valuation. The REWIND project aims to develop GIS-based methods based on multi-criteria analysis (MCA) for sustainable wind power planning.

In the case study of the County of Västernorrland, stakeholders are engaged in the main MCA steps, the design step with factor selection, treatment and aggregation, as well as weighting, and the evaluation step. Preparing this, to gain credibility, we analyse not only scientific literature but also existing planning documents and legal judgments in order to find relevant factors and their treatment and valuation. For the MCA process, we built the REWIND–GIS toolbox in Python for ArcGIS where factor parameters can be easily altered and conflicts in terms of different criteria can be aggregated and scrutinized. Through this a wide array of uncertainties can be tested, such as graded safety distances or conflict areas in varying degrees. Weights of factors from stakeholders are integrated into the model to arrive at different scenarios for suitable sites which are evaluated.

The evaluation and ranking of alternatives can then use the original factors, weights and conflicts while adding also new emerging factors, spatial or non-spatial. In this stage different methods of evaluation are also compared and tested. Through the systematic and transparent approach, planners have various options to choose from the decision space with improved understanding about the trade-offs in a quantified manner. REWIND bridges the knowledge gap in treatment of diverse factors and their performances spatially, through development of the transferable REWIND-GIS tool. This planning support tool will enable sustainable wind power planning on regional level, considering main sustainability aspects and diversified perspectives.

The quest for cogent responses to sustainability goals challenges local spatial planning practices across growing metropolitan regions to develop planning approaches that enable transformative capacity in increasingly complex settings. Based on a case study conducted in the Stockholm region, this paper explores the design and organization of local planning processes to provide a basis for a discussion of alternative approaches that may enhance sustainability in plan and project development. More specifically, it aims to analyze the conditions for embedding and consolidating sustainability issues in local planning processes. The results show that the municipalities need to create conditions for an effective interplay between the planning work carried out in individual projects and the organization of resources, knowledge, and skills on which the projects depend to handle sustainability issues. This study contributes to the understanding of the challenges associated with putting sustainability into practice at the local level by identifying and conceptualizing three important barriers. By acknowledging the temporal, locational, and procedural dimensions of knowledge in local planning processes, planning practices may become better at knowing when, and in what ways, different forms of knowledge can become created, introduced, and used in a synergistic manner to aid the realization of sustainability goals.