The aim of this thesis is to deepen understanding of how sustainability is integrated into urban development through different governance instruments.The thesis focuses on two central instruments in contemporary urban development in Sweden: certification systems for sustainable urban areas and urban experiments. Previous research on certification systems has primarily examined the content, indicators, and structures of existing systems. This thesis instead focuses on how certification systems for urban areas are developed and shaped through trade-offs between competing principles and requirements that guide their design. By analysing a development process, the thesis contributes knowledge about the rationales and considerations that underpin certification as a governance instrument. In the case of urban experiments, it is often assumed that experimental projects generate learning that can be transferred beyond individual cases. However, questions of how such learning is organised and scaled within municipal organisations have received less attention. This thesis therefore examines how learning from urban experiments can be identified, organised, and scaled in municipal practice. The research draws primarily on transdisciplinary and design-oriented approaches, in which knowledge is developed through close engagement with practice. A central empirical component is the development of the certification system Citylab Post-Construction, in which the researcher was actively involved. This provided an in-depth basis for analysing the trade-offs and considerations that shape certification system design. In addition, the thesis includes two empirical studies of urban experiments in municipal contexts, examining both the testing of new approaches to structuring upscaling and municipal practitioners’ perspectives on learning and organisational conditions. The findings show that the development of certification systems for sustainable urban areas is characterised by recurring trade-offs between competing principles, such as simplicity, comprehensiveness, and methodological credibility. Making these trade-offs explicit enhances understanding of why certification systems take the forms they do and what limitations follow from different design choices. The studies of urban experiments show that while experimentation can create opportunities for learning and innovation, such learning often remains project-bound unless supported by organisational structures. Upscaling learning depends primarily on organisational conditions within municipalities, including mandates, resources, and recipient capacity, rather than on the content or scope of individual experiments. Clarifying what should be scaled, how it can be scaled, and under what conditions is therefore a central part of making experimental knowledge actionable. Overall, the thesis shows that certification systems and urban experiments shape sustainable urban development in fundamentally different ways. Certification systems tend to reinforce established standards and ways of working, while their reliance on measurable and influenceable indicators means that sustainability dimensions that are difficult to quantify or attribute to specific actors risk receiving less attention. Urban experiments, in contrast, often stabilise project-based approaches to sustainability work, where continuous cycles of pilots and innovation can overshadow the upscaling of already tested solutions. At the same time, both instruments can play important roles in supporting the integration of sustainability in urban development, provided that their governing effects and limitations are recognised and managed in practice.

Syftet med denna avhandling är att fördjupa förståelsen för hur hållbarhet kanintegreras i stadsutveckling genom olika former av styrning.

Avhandlingenfokuserar på två verktyg för att styra hållbarhetsfrågor i stadsutveckling, somvarit centrala för stadsutvecklingen i Sverige senaste åren: certifieringssystemför hållbara stadsdelar och urbana experiment.

När det gäller certifieringssystem har tidigare forskning i huvudsak analyseratinnehåll, indikatorer och strukturer i befintliga system. I denna avhandlingligger istället fokus på hur certifieringssystem för stadsdelar utvecklas ochformas genom avvägningar mellan olika principer och krav som styr derasutformning.

Vad gäller urbana experiment finns det ofta en uttalad förväntan om attexperimentella projekt inom hållbar stadsutveckling ska generera lärande somkan tas vidare och få genomslag i andra sammanhang. Samtidigt har självatestandet ofta stått i centrum, medan frågor om hur lärande faktisktorganiseras och skalas inom kommunala organisationer fått mindreuppmärksamhet. I detta sammanhang undersöker avhandlingen hur lärandefrån urbana experiment kan identifieras, organiseras och skalas i kommunalpraktik.

Utifrån dessa empiriska studier analyseras även vad resultaten innebär förförståelsen av hur certifieringssystem och urbana experiment kan användas föratt styra hållbarsfrågorna i stadsutveckling.IVAvhandlingen bygger främst på en kombination av transdisciplinära ochdesignorienterade forskningsansatser, där kunskap utvecklas i nära samspelmed praktik. En central del av forskningen utgörs av utvecklingen av ”Citylab –certifiering av en stadsdels hållbarhet”, där forskaren varit aktivt involverad iutvecklingsprocessen. Detta arbete har möjliggjort en fördjupad analys av deavvägningar, spänningar och överväganden som präglar utvecklingen avcertifieringssystem.

Utöver Citylab-studien omfattar avhandlingen två empiriska studier av urbanaexperiment i kommunal kontext. Studierna belyser lärande och uppskalningfrån urbana experiment genom både prövning av nya arbetssätt och analys avkommunala tjänstepersoners erfarenheter och organisatoriska förutsättningar.

Avhandlingens huvudsakliga resultat visar att utvecklingen avcertifieringssystem för hållbara stadsdelar präglas av återkommandeavvägningar mellan konkurrerande principer. Detta gäller exempelvisspänningar mellan att utforma system som är enkla att använda och samtidigttillräckligt omfattande för att uppfattas som trovärdiga och metodologiskttillförlitliga. Genom att synliggöra dessa avvägningar bidrar avhandlingen tillen fördjupad förståelse av vilka frågor och prioriteringar som präglarutvecklingen av certifieringssystem, samt hur de val som görs kan motiverasoch göras mer transparenta. Därigenom ger resultaten också ökad förståelseför varför certifieringssystem utformas som de gör och vilka begränsningarsom följer av olika designval.

Studierna av urbana experiment visar att experiment kan skapa viktigamöjligheter för lärande och innovation i kommunal praktik, men att dettalärande ofta förblir situationsbundet och projektberoende. För att urbanaexperiment ska få genomslag bortom enskilda projekt krävs mer struktureradearbetssätt för att identifiera, artikulera och ta tillvara lärdomar. Resultatenvisar särskilt att uppskalning av lärande är beroende av organisatoriskaförutsättningar inom kommuner, såsom tydliga mandat, resurser ochmottagarkapacitet, snarare än av experimentens innehåll eller omfattning i sig.

Sammantaget visar avhandlingen att certifieringssystem och urbanaexperiment är fundamentalt olika sätt att styra hållbarhetsfrågor istadsutvecklingen. Certifieringssystem tenderar att förstärka redan etableradestandarder, samtidigt som kravet på mätbarhet innebär att hållbarhetsfrågorsom är svårare att kvantifiera riskerar att hamna i bakgrunden. Vidareförutsätter certifieringssystem att rådighet kan avgränsas till enskilda aktörer,vilket står i kontrast till att mång hållbarhetsfrågor behöver lösas genomVsamverkan. Urbana experiment kan i stället bidra till att etablera ett merprojektbaserat arbetssätt, där återkommande pilotprojekt ochinnovationssatsningar ibland sker på bekostnad av att befintliga lösningarskalas upp och integreras i ordinarie verksamhet. Samtidigt visar resultaten attbåda dessa verktyg kan spela viktiga roller för att stödja integreringen avhållbarhet i stadsutveckling, förutsatt att deras styrande effekter ochbegränsningar uppmärksammas och hanteras i praktiken.

As municipalities are key actors in addressing sustainability challenges, it is crucial that they learn and amplify new solutions for urban climate governance. This paper uses a Swedish municipality as a case study to explore how cutting-edge projects can be used to generate learning and amplify climate mitigation within and across municipal departments. Interviews with civil servants from all ‘building departments’ at the case municipality were analyzed using urban climate governance, governance learning, social learning, organisational learning, urban experimentation, amplification, and institutional capacity theories. The findings include three major results: (1) Cutting-edge projects mainly lead to single-loop learning and replication within departments, while double-loop learning and deep scaling across departments are seen as important by strategic civil servants. (2) Focusing on recipients of learning, rather than treating cutting-edge projects as disseminating teachers, supports learning. (3) The various theories used are closely interconnected but not interchangeable, collectively offering valuable insights into the role of cutting-edge projects in learning across departments.

Municipalities employ pilot projects, tests, living labs and similar initiatives to explore novel sustainable solutions for urban development. Nevertheless, civil servants often encounter challenges when attempting to scale up tested solutions, both within their own city and to other cities. To address this and increase knowledge on how theory can be utilised by practitioners, this research project has created a supportive tool aimed at facilitating the upscaling process. The development took place in co-creation with civil servants from the three largest cities in Sweden. The paper confirms earlier research on the need of institutional capacity as well as appropriate navigation between institutional logics as pre-requisites for upscaling. More specifically, institutional capacity plays a vital role for securing sufficient resources and mandates for upscaling, extending beyond mere dissemination of results. The supportive tool aims at enhancing this institutional capacity and translating between institutional logics. In addition, the paper contributes to the scientific debate on civil servants’ understanding of different forms of upscaling and, consequently, the need to articulate these differences when facilitating upscaling. The paper emphasizes that upscaling should be conceptualised not as a discrete event but rather an ongoing process starting already when planning a pilot project.

This paper describes the development of Citylab Post-Construction, a Swedish certification system for evaluating the sustainability performance of urban areas in a post-construction phase once the area is inhabited. The process design was based on transdisciplinary and research-through-design approaches, and involved experts and practitioners within Swedish urban planning, real estate and construction sector. This paper is not highlighting the certification system per se, but rather the process of developing it, with the aim of increasing the understanding of such design processes. A previously developed, but so far untested, framework of key considerations for certification systems was used to clarify benefits and drawbacks of different design decisions. The framework was used in all steps of the process, from defining the overall structure, to selecting indicators, formulating detailed requirements and assessing comments of the open consultation of a draft version. The framework of key considerations proved useful in supporting this process, by highlighting conflicts as well as synergies and creating transparency with respect to trade-offs needed between being e.g., scientifically credible but still practical enough. While it is difficult to separate the framework from the process in which it was put to use, we believe that the framework can be supportive also in other processes, both for developing new certification systems or for refining and evaluating existing ones.

Addressing sustainability in urban planning has led to an increasing number of certification systems to support such processes. Nevertheless, there is no commonly recognised framework listing what is important to consider when developing such systems. Citylab is a certification system that is used in several Swedish urban development projects. Today, Citylab certifies the planning process of urban areas but it will be extended with a post-construction part. This paper presents a three steps analysis of the design of such a post-construction certification system. First, a literature review was performed, which allowed for identifying three principles and 11 sub-principles that make up a generic framework for the design of similar certification systems. Second, 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Sweden with key urban development stakeholders to better specify the scope of a post-construction extension of Citylab. As a result, four alternatives emerge for the role and function of this system. Third, crossing the results of both previous steps allowed for an understanding of important considerations and implications for the Citylab post-construction certification system design. The paper concludes on the relevance of such a reflexive procedure for the design of certification systems in general, in which the use of the framework is a key to ensure transparency and enable deliberate choices and priorities.

This paper describes the development of Citylab Post‑construction, a certification system for evaluating the sustainability performance of urban areas in a post-construction phase. To facilitate transparency and deliberateness, a framework of important considerations for certification systems were used throughout the development process to clarify benefits and drawbacks of different decisions. The process was characterised by collaboration with experts and practitioners within Swedish urban planning, real estate and construction. Applying the principles proved useful in achieving a transparent and deliberative process, despite conflicts between some principles. The principles may also be applicable in other similar processes. How Citylab Post‑construction will be used and its ability to drive change are questions for future work.