Cities and Governance for Net-Zero: Assessing Procedures and Tools for Innovative Design of Urban Climate Governance in Europe

Abstract

Despite the collective promise of integrating more open (broader-based, participatory) city-level governance into the global energy governance regime, little attention has been paid to the different impact logics and assumptions underpinning local procedural governance tools (PGTs) in circulation and the degree to which they address key good governance dimensions dominantly thought to be indicative of transformation. This review aims to fill this gap by mapping and analyzing key energy transition PGTs circulating across four climate action initiatives that mobilize and provide support to cities and local governments. A framework—REPAIR: Reflexivity, Enabling/Embedding, Participatory, Integrative, Adaptive, and Radicality—is proposed based on a synthesis of common governance innovation design features, and a representative sample of 25 PGTs are evaluated against these dimensions. The analysis reveals a need for (1) more differentiation and tailored capacity relating to governance monitoring, evaluating, and learning systems; (2) more attention to prioritization and design factors across different governance interventions in relation to local climate actions; and (3) more nuanced theories of change for operationalizing local power/coalition/mandate building (across different dimensions of governance). This article concludes that there are real gaps in how the collective advantages, opportunities, and promise of traveling “ideal types” of good governance will be fulfilled and outlines future research directions for informing more aligned governance innovation for low-carbon transitions in urban areas.

1. Introduction

Climate emergency declarations from cities and national governments around the world, three decades of global forums, and an expanding universe of climate action and governance initiatives have all failed to bend the global emissions curve [1]. Recent global stocktaking paints a stark picture, with global warming projections seeing no improvement since 2021 and the combined effect of current policies and action setting the world on a path toward an overshoot of the 2030 Paris Agreement goal [2]. While noting a massive gap between the rhetoric of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and reality, the UN Environment Program’s recent emissions gap report notes that it remains technically possible to get on a 1.5 °C pathway, but it would require “global mobilization on a scale and pace never seen before [3]”. Against this backdrop, the proliferation of climate action initiatives has arisen out of consensus at all levels, from global to local, of the urgency to decarbonize (the what); in contrast, we have seen a lack of consensus on decarbonization pathways, policy integration to pursue net-zero emissions, and governance (the how). And while cities are seen as essential to bridging this climate action gap, many factors, not least the complexity and uncertainty regarding the means and ends of urban climate governance, have stymied the development of a common language for evaluating good governance across levels.

This paper offers a work-in-progress account of ways in which we can conceptualize and understand the complex system of emerging climate governance networks in European cities—a crucial set of players in urban climate policy. What are the procedures, tools, and evaluative approaches, and how are they contributing to policy learning and effective governance of climate action? A framework, REPAIR, is proposed and outlined to help clarify the complexities of climate governance networks and their goals and processes in Europe.

So far, governance theory has mirrored the fragmented climate governance landscape, with an expanding universe of approaches circulating in different networks and initiatives underpinned by different norms and impact logics [4,5]. There is consensus that governance innovation is needed, and there have been nascent attempts to consolidate key dimensions [6] and modes [7,8]. However, questions about interactions between innovative (non-hierarchical, temporary, and experimental) and traditional (command and control, existing bureaucratic) climate governance modes, which tools should be used to bridge them and guide decision-making about innovative ways of governing, or how changes in organizational values prescribed in the given tools’ affect governance approaches in practice, have remained largely ignored [9,10].

Procedural tools of governance interact with substantive tools of policy to structure and influence the formulation of local climate and innovation actions and their implementation [11]. This process has been termed policy instrument learning [12] and policy learning governance [13]. A distinction is made between hard (required/fixed application/top-down design) and soft (recommended/flexible application/bottom-up design) tools employed by networks. A helpful idea on which to focus within this field is the role of “soft” procedural tools in governance processes [14]. Although central to realizing the new forms of urban governance required for integrated net-zero transformations, the interaction of procedural tools, governance (re)arrangements, and local innovation management capacity has received inadequate attention [15,16]. Deeper knowledge of the characteristics of procedural governance tools (here interpreted as procedural tools for good governance planning, recommended processes, and guiding principles for cities developing net-zero and net-zero-related action plans) and the dynamics involved in their development and operationalization is needed [14,17]. An open question remains if these tools or combination of tools are fit for the purpose. This work has the following objectives:

(1)

Contribute to understandings of the new experimental city governance theory of change model emerging by isolating and elaborating its core dimensions; and,

(2)

Set the stage for empirical work on whether/how concepts of good governance in the abstract (embodied in the tools’ design) are influencing changes to urban governance that can support policies for carbon neutrality.

This contribution addresses this gap by mapping procedural governance tools developed and circulating within four networked initiatives designed to mobilize/support local governance innovation to develop a picture of emerging thought on the normative design principles cities should build into their governance innovation interventions. It starts by comparing three contrasting approaches to climate-related governance involving cities and then identifies key dimensions of good governance surfacing in procedural tools within the four identified networks; these form the basis of an evaluative framework that is elaborated and then used to assess how the governance design principles are reflected across a set of 25 procedural tools.

The framework is then mapped against relevant scholarship and analyses of the conceptual underpinnings of the mission-driven governance approach, using the EU 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission (Cities Mission) [18] as an example of a tool(kit) aiming at holistic governance innovation. The reflection concludes with suggested future research directions for generating new insights into cross-cutting challenges common to urban governance design work.

1.1. Example 1: The Rise of Cities and Non-State Actors in the Global Governance Regime

Recent years have seen a groundswell of non-state and subnational actors taking a more active role in the global climate governance regime. Global mobilization campaigns like the United Nations’ twin Race to Zero (2020) and Race to Resilience (2021) [19] are examples of attempts to integrate this groundswell of voluntary non-state and subnational actors into the global regime [20,21,22]. The UN launching city versions of the twin campaigns is consistent with variants of the messaging from successive UN leaders and other key global actors like the World Bank [23,24,25], namely, “The battle for climate change will be won or lost in cities.” The failure of the pledge and review system (national governments’ pledge emissions targets in NDCs under the Paris Agreement) led to enthusiasm for the potential of catalytic and cooperative governance to galvanize the groundswell of non-state actors via transnational, multi-stakeholder partnerships facilitated by UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) partners [5,26,27]. This approach has manifested itself in new forms within the global governance regime, including forming Galvanizing the Groundswell of Climate Actions (GGCA) as a platform within the UNFCCC process for realizing the potential for accelerated implementation at all levels [28]. GGCA’s role in bringing together cities, regions, companies, and other groups that make up the “groundswell” takes a variety of forms: catalyzing and brokering action via collaboration between all actors, including supporting/amplifying existing initiatives (e.g., contributing to exponential growth in the number and range of actors involved in Race to Zero); facilitating capacity building and information exchange between Parties (national governments) and non-Parties (non-state and subnational actors); building a strong “ambition loop”; enhancing reporting (ensuring credibility and accountability) and communication (giving a global message of hope regarding working together to tackle shared challenges); and strengthening GGCA organization on political and operational levels [29].

GGCA’s advocacy and convening role sits alongside the formal structure of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action led by the UNFCCC High-Level Champions, which is underpinned by the catalytic model referred to earlier, facilitating greater links between state and non-state action, greater transparency and legitimacy of pledges and cooperative initiatives under the Paris Agreement via a global reporting platform, and as a part of that, developing reporting criteria that Race to Zero/Race to Resilience partners can use to review progress [30,31,32]. This shift has seen a blending of the global governance regime with existing transnational governance networks, making transnational actions of cities and regions alongside the private sector a central feature of UNFCCC orchestration, with delegated responsibility to established networks (e.g., C40, ICLEI, WWF, GCoM, UCLG, WRI, etc.) to deliver capacity building support and ensure reporting standards via established reporting platforms such as the CDP-ICLEI Unified Reporting System, MyCovenant, and PCP/BARC (Canada) [19,26,33,34,35]. The 5P framework underpinning the Race to Zero campaign and the twinning with Race to Resilience point to an attempt to integrate collaborative climate mitigation and adaptation, with a (1) pledge being the starting point; (2) followed by a transition plan (that’s made publicly available); (3) then, campaign members proceed to take action; (4) publish reports on targets and actions on an open access platform; and (5) persuade others by aligning policy and engagement with halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 [36]. The 5th P, persuade, was added in 2022 with a focus on recommended advocacy, policy, and engagement actions aligned with achieving breakthroughs or transformations across key fields of action: built environment, energy, industry, transport, and nature [31]. This model emphasizes the relationship between innovations from the leadership of strong voluntary initiatives experimenting at the frontier of best practice, which are then consolidated via orchestration campaigns and feed into standards and regulations to scale best practices and make them binding [31] (p. 48).

1.2. Example 2: The Growing Influence of the Mission Approach–Public Sector Reform Can “Save the World”

The urgency to act combined with failures at the national and global level in part explain the “rise in experimentalism” [9,37,38], emphasizing the local determination of pathways through shared governance models that embrace complexity and uncertainty and place-based, citizen-centric approaches. In other words, this emerging experimentalist governance challenges business-as-usual governance (top-down, predetermined solutions) in favor of more ambitious and participatory governance (more bottom-up, iterative solutions) driven by co-creation and co-implementation with citizens and stakeholders.

The launch of the Cities Mission embodies this ethos and makes the role of cities even more explicit, putting 112 selected cities center stage as hubs for experimentation and governance innovation. The Cities Mission Board’s report set out the vision for a new city governance designed to overcome the main obstacle for cities to achieve net-zero transformations by 2030: implementation capacity [39]. The report presents a clear diagnosis of the problem not lying with a lack of technologies, but with the present siloed governance designed for traditional city operations and services; thus, systemic transformation together with innovating the local administration is urgently needed, requiring cities and their political leaders to bring all stakeholders with them on their net-zero journey. While cities are rooted in a diversity of contexts, common barriers to such transformation have been mapped and synthesized, including lack of finance, an often unfavorable national legislative and regulatory environment, and gaps in expertise for long-term climate and energy actions and tools/methods to scale up inclusive participation [40].

The Mission and the recently established Net Zero Cities Mission Platform [41] (hereafter Mission Platform) were established to develop the knowledge and approaches needed for 112 “Mission cities” to reach net-zero by 2030 and ultimately support all European cities to reach net-zero by 2050 [42]. Cities have a history of engaging in networks of urban experts and practitioners—that is, transnational municipal networks (TMNs) like C40 (2005) [43], ICLEI (1990) [44], and GCoM (2008) [45]—and have played a role in developing and circulating a diverse range of urban governance knowledge and processes [46]. So while it is not new in terms of a network/platform approach, the Mission Platform emerged amidst recently created national platforms (see [47,48] for detail)—like UK100 in the UK context, started in 2016 [49]; Viable Cities for Sweden, established in 2017 [50]; and citiES 2030 for Spain, began in 2021 [51]—and institutional “pledge and report” processes mostly focused on reporting of emissions reductions via platforms like CDP-ICLEI Track [52] and MyCovenant [53,54].

The Cities Mission builds on these developments, calling for cities to co-develop holistic, iterative (updated every 2 years) climate action portfolios with citizens and stakeholders focused on key emitting sectoral action fields (built environment; energy systems; mobility and transport; green infrastructure and nature-based solutions; waste and circular economy; and other/custom, such as industry). Effectively, the mission approach introduces a planning process that encourages cities to expand monitoring beyond emissions to include co-benefits and organizational (governance) and social innovation interventions [42,55,56]. There is recognition that national-level support is needed to enable cities to drive the large-scale transformations required for achieving climate neutrality alongside huge expectations that public sector innovation can save the world, yet current public sector skills, capabilities, and resources are lacking [57].

While the Mission Platform comprises a consortium of companies and consultancies, research organizations, think tanks, and universities, in addition to TMNs, it is indicative of the TMN governance innovation cycle of idea generation, selection, implementation, and, finally, practice dissemination [58]. Indeed, Mazzucato’s mission approach [59,60] that underpins the Cities Mission (see [61] for background) is a poignant example of this, with the Mission Zero review and coalition being a UK example of the early stages of this cycle [62,63,64]. The Mission Platform model focuses on supporting Mission cities, or trailblazers with 2030 net-zero ambitions, whose pilot initiatives and experiences working with governance innovation processes are then harvested to generate insights on solutions, structures, and approaches that are disseminated via digital and non-digital channels, which can them be scaled up and replicated by other cities [65,66,67]. Mission cities and the Mission Platform are also tasked with seeking synergies where engagement exists with the Climate Adaptation Mission to ensure that climate neutrality activities consider climate adaptation requirements and vice versa [68] (p. 18).

1.3. Example 3: The Green Growth Narrative—Co-Benefits and Thriving in the Doughnut

In tandem with the above trends, namely, the blurring of the lines between international climate governance and transnational network governance rooted in catalytic cooperation and the growing influence of mission-inspired approaches that rely on public sector innovation and experimentation, is the idea of future-proofing city economies, or making them “future-fit” [69,70,71,72]. The Cities of Tomorrow 2019–2020 project is recent example, where six EU lighthouse cities in the Energy Cities network implemented the transition management approach to governance innovation (see [73,74] for background) to develop 2050 sustainability transition roadmaps together with citizens and other local stakeholders through participatory processes of visioning, learning, and experimenting.

This project culminated in a “transition toolbox” cities can use to design participatory processes to co-create transitions toward a low-carbon future aimed at increasing the quality of life of citizens; the garden metaphor is used to demarcate the methodological steps of (1) understanding the conditions, (2) planting the seeds, (3) nurturing growth, and (4) harvesting results and continuing the cycle [75]. Cities conduct system and actor analyses in the first step, which includes defining the system boundaries, with demarcating by sector (e.g., mobility, public space, heating, electricity, material use, etc.) being one recommended approach, to understand transition dynamics such as relations between sectors, who the relevant actors are within the system, and, as a result, where the focus of the transformation, or radical core, should be. Cities then build out transition activities aligned with the transformative impact objectives and address legitimacy in the next step, focus on internal organization and institutionalization to build momentum in Step 3, and, finally, generate insights, buy-in, and additional resources for acceleration.

The Tomorrow garden model is focused on empowering cities to design and implement governance innovation activities towards an increasingly thriving, self-sufficient local enabling ecosystem by employing (1) reflexive governance to learn and adjust, add, or remove interventions and (2) anticipatory governance to develop, experiment with, and resource structures that allow for the needed revisiting/adapting the radical core and supporting impact activities, including through replicating or scaling up initiatives implemented in a previous cycle. Reflections from the Tomorrow project conclude with encouraging cities to follow in the Tomorrow cities’ footsteps by joining the Energy Cities Hub on Future-Proof Local Governance [76,77].

The Hub connects governance innovation with future-proofing city economies broadly in terms of setting up long-term local partnerships to deliver planned climate neutrality actions and experimenting with new participatory processes to transform local ecosystems; a key vehicle in achieving this is presenting alternatives and new narratives to inspire cities to rethink local social and economic models based on local resource regeneration (including sufficiency and circular economy models like Doughnut Economics; see [78,79]) while ensuring societal solidarity and equity. Leuven 2030, a nonprofit organization engaging quadruple helix stakeholders (public, private, academic, and civic sectors) in a roadmap process towards 2030/2050 and a Tomorrow example of an innovative governance arrangement, has used the Futureproofed Cities platform as a part of its integrated knowledge and monitoring and learning processes to evaluate and adjust roadmap activities using indicators on carbon emissions and co-benefits. This conception of future-proofing involves quantifying (and monetizing) the (co-)benefits of short-term local climate actions (the evidence of quick wins/impact) to make the case for/create more momentum around long-term objectives by advocating for policy coherence (to enable what’s working), stimulating new innovations, and enabling cross-city shared stakeholder ownership of the climate neutrality and resilience goals [69], [75] (p. 48), [80].

Future-proofing is not a new concept. Although there is no widely accepted definition [81], definitions for cities across the developing world have focused on cities’ capabilities to respond to climate risks/impacts in ways that catalyze inclusive development [82] and, more broadly, on creating adaptability and resilience in the face of the unknown challenges, including the climate crisis, by rethinking how to invest wisely in cities [83,84]. It is this combination of resource-wise, inclusive urban development that addresses the impacts and risks of climate change while delivering local co-benefits [71], [77] (p. 24)], [78]—like improved resilience, public health, and place-based, regenerative economic growth—that makes up the approach to future proof or future fit city economies. The future fit concept, being tested at the EU level and in cities globally, is elaborated in the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) suite of tools referenced above. These emphasize a shared ownership (distributive) model for transformation projects undertaken that are informed by multiple social (e.g., energy, income and work, equity, political voice) and ecological (e.g., cleaner air, temperature regulation, biodiversity) indicators and participatory processes [85,86]. Through strategic learning by performing cycles in the Tomorrow project, Energy Cities hubs, and the DEAL network, cities engage in urban transformation partnerships that aim to decarbonize key sectoral fields of action while accruing multiple benefits locally that also contribute to demonstrating which approaches can be scaled/accelerated.

1.4. Mobilization, Good Governance Models, and Procedural Governance Tools (PGTs)

As alluded to earlier, PGTs are co-determined and co-governed at different levels but are also facilitated across TMNs via initiatives [14] and are iterated over time as understandings of good governance evolve. As such, PGTs capture dominant thinking circulating in networks about what constitutes good governance (i.e., are ideal types); additionally, PGTs are relational (in cases informing future PGTs or interrelated with other PGTs) and translative (altered to fit the local processes/align with other PGTs). Procedural policy tools are concerned with the how of policy formulation (and forming strategies for implementation), including the process of defining interventions, who is involved, and alterations to governance structures, that feeds into and has the potential to legitimize substantive tools (e.g., regulations, carbon credits, public investments/projects). The procedural element also crucially involves (re)channeling political attention [11] or bolstering the mandate of the city to act via (as we have seen above) multi-sector, multi-actor, multi-level collaborations. These multi-stakeholder partnerships are mobilized using different conceptual approaches, such as “mission-oriented innovation” (EU, and globally [87]), “mission zero” (UK), “race to zero”, “race to resilience” (globally), and “future-proof cities” (primarily EU), to accelerate net-zero and climate resilience action. However, as is shown in

Table 1. Mobilizing initiatives and good governance perspectives.

Characteristics	Cities Race to Zero Campaign	Cities Race to Resilience Campaign	100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission	Energy Cities	Mission Zero Coalition
Year Established/ Leadership	2020/United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change + 7 partners	2021/United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change + 8 partners	2021/European Commission + 34 NetZeroCities partners	1990/Energy Cities + leading: CoM Europe (2008), Eastern Europe/South Caucasus (2011) offices	2023/Former UK Energy Minister + 27 member organizations
Focus	Mitigation and adaptation	Mitigation and adaptation	Primarily mitigation	Mitigation and adaptation	Primarily mitigation
Mobilizing Concept	Race to Zero	Race to Resilience	Mission-oriented innovation	Future-proof cities	Mission Zero
Cities Involved	1143 cities globally	733 cities globally	112 cities; 27 EU, 8 non-EU countries	174 cities; 22 EU, 10 non-EU countries	112 UK100 local authorities
Approach and Time Horizon	Engage subnational and non-state signatories via partners to accelerate actions to half global emissions by 2030 and become net-zero by 2050 at the latest while ensuring a healthy, resilient, zero-carbon recovery	Engage subnational and non-state actors to strengthen 4 billion vulnerable people’s resilience to climate risks by 2030; ensure adaptation/resilience are fully integrated into local planning	Help 100 EU and 12 Horizon Europe-associated country cities become climate-neutral by 2030 and generate the insights, structures, and approaches that help all EU cities become climate-neutral by 2050	Support member cities via learning hubs to reach climate neutrality by 2050 via systems approaches to realizing decarbonized, resilient cities: (a) access to affordable, secure, and sustainable energy; (b) local development aligned with SDGs	Net-zero proposed as a green growth opportunity; UK must seize this to remain a leader/competitor in the global “race” and reach net-zero by 2050
Governance Model	Vertical integration of subnational and non-state net-zero actions to better align with NDCs and global SDGs	Vertical integration of subnational and non-state resilience actions to better align with NDCs and global SDGs	Multi-level governance using co-created Climate City Contracts focused on innovative “holistic” city governance and encouraging national support platforms for cities	Multi-level governance via policy dialog and multi-level, city-to-city cooperation to create favorable conditions to translate policies/actions across places/levels (EU to local)	Alignment of governance structures to harness public and private climate action via ten priority missions to 2035
Good Governance	Harness the “groundswell” of voluntary targets via tools (e.g., campaigns, standard setting, and regulations) to create a high-integrity governance ecosystem and shape global economic “ground rules”	New, inclusive approaches that balance economic and well-being values, co-designing the vision/choices for a holistic strategy that integrates climate, social, and health objectives	A new city governance based on (a) a holistic approach to foster innovation and deployment; (b) a matrix of integrated and multi-level governance; and (c) deep, continuous stakeholder collaboration	Governance changes (revised economic rules and adapted legal frameworks) should enable a “local & sustainable first” approach to future-proof economies	A UK-wide, whole economy approach that is (a) participatory, delivery-based; (b) long-term to provide the clarity, certainty, and direction for net-zero

, each mobilization concept differs in its geographic and temporal scale, focus (mitigation, adaptation), governance model, and approach to good governance. Taken together, these represent recent attempts (albeit in different ways) to mobilize a greater number of actors, build local capacity for coordinated implementation (including the development of tools/toolkits), and align different levels of action. Whereas TMN/transnational climate governance initiatives of the past focused on horizontal complementarities, these new forms of governance are taking on vertical alignment in various ways. Each approach aims to decarbonize key sectoral fields of action, test innovative approaches to shared governance (with increased citizen and stakeholder engagement), integrate mitigation actions and adaptation or resilience planning, find alignments between the public and private sector goals in ways that mobilizes co-financing of sectoral interventions, and accelerate net-zero and related pathways by identifying best practices and solutions that can be replicated and scaled up.

2. Methodology

This review took some methodological inspiration from previous governance studies that have mapped initiatives and conducted content analysis of relevant documents and digital media [88,89,90]. Documents, digital media, literature, and other relevant materials were sought to answer the following questions, which were designed to identify circulating theoretical conceptions of governance and recommended governance design and practice:

(1)

How do orchestrating bodies and transnational municipal networks (TMNs) supporting local actors envision good governance?

(2)

What procedural governance tools (PGTs) are local governance actors using?

(3)

What are the common theoretical underpinnings of emerging PGTs?

This review involved scanning the websites of known initiatives supporting local/city actors to achieve net-zero emissions, conducting web searches for similar initiatives, and then exploring what guidance/resource materials were available/recommended to initiative members. Webinars, podcasts, and other materials recommended by researchers were also considered and reviewed for additional insights into the initiatives and how they framed relevant net-zero governance issues. The process is outlined in Figure 1 and the steps below:

(1)

Mapping of framings and frameworks across initiatives targeting cities and local authorities from known initiatives (see Supplementary File S1); descriptive/guidance materials were quickly scanned for governance-related frameworks during searches.

(2)

Import into NVivo Release 1.0 (R1) to conduct word frequency scans for key governance, net-zero, tools/mechanisms, and resilience terms based on Step 1 (see Supplementary File S2 for terms used), plus a systematic scan for any tools/relevant concepts missed.

(3)

In-depth analysis of the 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities (Cities Mission) and Energy Cities corpus documents to identify key emerging mission-oriented governance concepts with academic literature in parallel and additional tools/concepts discovered in the process of reviewing existing documents (28) and associated materials via the snowballing method.

(4)

Finalize corpus with additional tools/conceptual materials from Step 3, repeat Step 2, and develop summaries of the 25 tools from 35 documents: detailing the purpose, climate action focus, design principles and values, and impact logics or assumptions toward a theory of change.

(5)

Construction of the evaluative framework—REPAIR: Reflexivity, Enabling/Embedding, Participatory, Integrative, Adaptive, and Radicality. Based on the steps above and the literature associated with the tools, iteratively developed the search terms/codes (see Supplementary File S2) using an inductive approach from observed frequencies and common descriptions/terms across the corpus. For example, during the corpus finalization in Step 4, the additional tools’ materials expanded the subthemes. Evaluation of tools against these dimensions based on their documents in the corpus (visualized in

Table 2. Corpus summary.

Initiative	Cluster	No. of Documents	No. of Tools
100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities	1	21	11
Energy Cities	2	10	5
Cities Race to Zero	3	29	6
Cities Race to Resilience	4	29	5 *

* 2 tools appeared across the twin campaigns.

—see Supplementary File S3 for full list).

(6)

Critically reflected on the emerging EU Cities Mission governance innovation approach based on Steps 1–5 and relevant literature, with a focus on broader implications of circulating conceptions of governance versus governance development needs on the ground.

2.1. Selection of PGTs

The documentation of the initiatives described in the Introduction was reviewed, with a focus on PGTs designed to support and coordinate actors at the local level. Given the number of cities participating at the time of writing, it is assumed that city-level actors are using the PGTs described/referenced in the materials developed by the initiative partners. The PGT selection largely fit into the following categories:

(1)

Publicly available guidance/knowledge resources or synopses of local and/or city-scale net-zero governance approaches, structures, or frameworks; and,

(2)

(2) Policy instrument guidelines that specifically outlined governance processes or concepts (e.g., CCC, SECAP, SUMP).

2.2. Analysis of the City Governance Mechanisms/Frameworks

The above, combined with informal interactions with urban governance scholars and experts, informed the development of the framework described in Section 3, which was then used to assess the degree to which the sample of PGTs adhered to the governance design dimensions. The PGTs were all broken down by key text used to describe their values, principles, and design elements and evaluated against the identified good governance subthemes by assessing the keywords and context of documents, using Supplementary File S2 as a guide. The PGTs were then further broken down into their specific purpose, climate action focus, design, and theory of change (see Supplementary File S3).

3. Results Toward a Procedural Governance Tool (PGT) Evaluative Framework

Several common subthemes emerged as indicative of core dimensions of good governance, both from the high-level scan of all clusters and the deeper analysis of the Cities Mission and Energy Cities clusters. These were synthesized to form the basis of the framework given in Figure 2 below (REPAIR). At a conceptual level, the REPAIR framework reveals which concepts from theory are permeating PGTs and the pervading institutional challenge they are seeking to diagnose: Today’s institutions and processes (e.g., innovation, governance, participation, collaboration, coordination) are not designed to deal with the complex, uncertain, and polycentric/poly crisis landscape. Beyond simply a top-down or bottom-up debate, this institutional deficit has seen scholars calling for the understanding and development of new forms of governance and institutional arrangements that can support new ways of working [91,92,93].

These new arrangements are seen as critical to drive the transition from centralized policymaking and decision-making by a small group of experts and officials to wider, collective decision-making/knowledge development, including multi-modal collaboration across sectors and redefining engagement/relationships between government and citizens and civil society. Operationally, the REPAIR framework acknowledges the contextual backdrop of needed institutional changes at the urban level: both the urgency to address climate change and the constraints of resource scarcity, political structures/conditions, knowledge/skill gaps, etc., preclude completely remaking institutions (or in cases, creating new ones). The thematic emphasis is on working with existing (in some cases broken) arrangements to create new bridging mechanisms/capacities: repairing, not necessarily remaking, arrangements to enable strong governance across the dimensions.

REPAIR offers a conceptual approach to understanding key challenges of urban governance but also a composite representation of how actors at different governance levels (e.g., intermediaries, cities, funders, knowledge partners, etc.) collectively self-defined good governance across the corpus and the associated digital media and literature. Far from exhaustive, it condenses key good governance dimensions from the actors’ perspectives to allow for (1) an analytical evaluation of the degree to which individual PGTs embody the collective definition of governance innovation (carried out in this reflection) and (2) form the basis for assessing the idealized/theoretical picture of governance innovation against the realities of governance practice. Each dimension of governance builds on established definitions found in a range of scholarly disciplines (e.g., science and technology studies, innovation studies, public administration, and institutional and policy-focused studies) (

Table 3. Governance design dimensions and indicative scholarship.

Reflexivity	Enabling/Embedding	Participatory	Adaptivity	Integrative	Radicality
1a. Internal and external listening and feedback loops (Mulgan 2022; Pahl-Wostl 2009) [94,95]	2a. Deep and continuous dialog and engagement (Jordan and Moore 2020) [96]	3a. Inclusivity (cross-sectoral, widening/deepening) (Torney 2021) [97]	4a. Agility (Wegrich 2023) [10]	5a. Long and short term	6a. Holistic system innovation
1b. Organizational development (Buylova et al., 2025; Deslatte and Stokan 2020) [98,99]	2b. Awareness and education	3b. Value-driven (Democracy, justice, trust, equity) (European Environment Agency 2024) [100] (p. 43)	4b. Flexibility (change from best and worst practices)	5b. Collective decision-making	6b. Radical core/radical collaboration (de Geus et al., 2022; Loorbach 2022) [74,101]
1c. Institutional restructuring and change (Tõnurist and Hanson 2020) [102]	2c. Connecting learning and policy (Sabel 2004; Sabel and Victor 2022) [103,104]	3c. Citizen-centric (Wanzenböck and Frenken 2020) [105]	4c. New tools, working cultures, and models (Scholz and Stiftel 2005; Chaffin et al., 2014) [106,107]	5c. Multi-modal collaborative roles (Sørensen and Torfing 2017) [108]	6c. Experimental governance and finance (Sabel and Zeiling 2008) [109]; (Fünfschilling et al., 2019; Bulkeley 2010) [110,111]
1d. Monitoring, evaluation, and learning (Mondal et al., 2024) [55]	2d. Anticipatory measures for embedding (Lam et al., 2020) [112]	3d. Multi-stakeholder partnerships (Uyarra et al., 2023) [113]	4d. Adapting to new insights/risks (Kivimaa et al., 2017; Laakso, Berg, and Annala 2017) [114,115]	5d. Multiple change levers (economic, social, carbon) and levels of governance (Jessop 2004; Sørensen and Torfing 2009) [116,117]	6d. Alternative visions and voices (Longhurst and Chilvers 2019) [118]

).

A summary of the assessment of identified PGTs associated with the corpus, according to which governance dimensions they most strongly exhibited, is shown in Figure 3 below. It should be noted that some PGTs were designed to address specific needs and do not, as a result, encompass all dimensions. Similarly, the apparent design of some PGTs may focus on one or two of the subthemes of each dimension; however, only PGTs that explicitly exhibited three or more subthemes were considered to be strongly exhibiting the given dimension. Direct comparison is not possible or the point of the assessment, but rather the analysis aims to show a representative range of PGTs used by cities and the primary dimensions they address.

All identified PGTs were not designed in isolation, and many authors stressed that no one-size-fits-all approach is possible; cities are combining PGTs to assist with the complexity of developing net-zero/carbon neutrality strategies and plans. The PGTs were evaluated according to how their design was reflected in the language of the documents; there will be variations in how they are applied in different contexts, which may make the execution of the given PGT more or less exemplify a particular dimension. The climate action focus of the tools by initiative and distribution by year is given below in Figure 4 and Figure 5 (listed in Appendix A; see Supplementary File S3 for more detail). Of the 25 PGTs, 2 are adaptation-focused, 6 are primarily mitigation-focused, 12 reference both mitigation and adaptation, and 5 reference neither (specifically). This suggests that there is some convergence around the need to support cities with mitigation and adaptation integration and shows the diversity and overlap of PGTs over time.

The individual dimensions of the REPAIR framework are now described in the remainder of this section, with their associated subthemes underlined. The interrelations, tensions, and assumptions behind the governance dimensions are discussed in Section 4.

3.1. Good Governance Dimension I–Reflexivity

This particular definition is framed with a central role for public authorities managing learning and institutional change processes, initiating strategic activities to build the local ecosystem (i.e., systems approach), and opening up dialog about desired low-carbon pathways (overlap with participatory dimension). Reflexive/reflexivity was primarily mentioned specifically in the Energy Cities cluster, but reflection was referred to frequently throughout the corpus. The point of departure in the context of urban governance is not just looking at the internal city administration in terms of organizational development but also putting monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) systems [119] in place that create and maintain ongoing internal and external listening and feedback loops [120]. The focus of the reflexivity is not on a final static strategy or product but on an ongoing cycle of applying MEL systems, feedback loops, etc., throughout the process of engaging key stakeholders (overlap with participatory/inclusivity) in transition activities that can have lasting impacts in terms of the local ecosystem to support change [16,40,119,120,121]. In particular, this means reflecting on what institutional restructuring and change is needed, both in terms of space to adjust/course correct (overlap with adaptivity) and embedding new ways of working, mindsets, cultures, and practices, including using more co-creative and open-ended approaches within the administration [75] (overlap with enabling/embedding).

Early insights from cities reflecting on their own use of reflexivity frameworks suggest that an important question for cities to consider is what continuous process reflection practices and tools exist, or are appropriate, given these contextual factors at work in their operating environments:

(1)

Consideration of and acting upon legitimacy tensions (i.e., political context, democratic structures vs. transformative ambitions/ways of working, and representation of wider interests/preferences beyond “business as usual” actors), including seeing the relationship between local government and citizens with new eyes;

(2)

Being mindful of which contextual factors/conditions (based on system analyses) are relevant to the radicality/innovation activities needed and adapting plans during the process; and,

(3)

Assessing existing leverage (institutional backing, resources) for the transition and what mindset changes and competencies are needed to fill gaps [75,122,123] (also see [124] for more detail on reflexive monitoring).

3.2. Good Governance Dimension II–Enabling/Embedding

For enabling and embedding, there is a focus on enablers and enabling conditions for new governance models, acting upon insights obtained through deep and continuous dialog and engagement with citizens and stakeholders that is both co-creative of net-zero pathways and innovative at a systems level (i.e., linking different actions/strategies into a strategic portfolio of actions–an aggregated, overarching environmental strategy) [16,39,40]. This again assumes a central orchestrating role for cities in co-designing integrated and aligned governance models by connecting learning and policy processes [119,122,125], namely, by assessing insights (reflexivity) from experiments with new ways of working, projects, and engagement activities and embedding those new systems, practices, and cultures that are contributing to enabling the desired change (e.g., continuous innovation, acceleration, replication, and upscaling of solutions) [16,121,122,123]. This also assumes there is space/resources to experiment and engage with wider networks and stakeholders and fundamentally demands that cities are set up to be or willing to become learning organizations prepared to confront (often covert) resistance mindset(s) and actively nurture a sense of shared ownership around common transition goals. Beyond temporary structures or engagement at single points in time, cities wishing to actively pursue more collaborative ways of working will need long-term, holistic awareness and education mechanisms and programs [121,123] designed to address siloed mindsets and promote collective (multiple values, stakeholders, departments, etc.) intelligence capability and decision-making that respond to emerging issues (adaptivity) [16].

The ultimate goal of enabling/embedding measures is to widen the arena to enable new actors to enter and accelerate the transition process, using iterative processes that enable faster learning about what is working and what else is needed for technological, economic, regulatory, and socio-cultural embedding of climate action [16,39,40,75,119,122,125]. A key point is to build anticipatory measures for embedding into the ethos of the transition management processes so the right enabling elements needed are anticipated from the start and throughout the transition journey to address existing governance flaws and allow for refinements, course corrections where necessary, and societal momentum (adaptivity/participatory) [75,126].

Here, mainstreaming climate action is an important strategy mentioned throughout, not only across city administration departments but empowering actors to embed sustainability across sectors [16]. Evidence- and data-based decision-making is emphasized across the corpus, with knowledge and data platforms and exchange among policymakers, cities, and stakeholders at different levels playing an important role. While emergence and complexity are mentioned and building consensus/awareness towards a shared vision was the overall recommended approach within the corpus, the connection between deep and continuous dialog and engagement and awareness and education (i.e., bringing citizens, businesses, etc., along the journey) was less elaborated. Stakeholder engagement was mentioned throughout as playing an important role, with the emphasis on informing (via physical spaces and digital platforms) and communicating using behavioral science and psychology-based strategies (including storytelling) [16,40,121].

3.3. Good Governance Dimension III–Participatory

The EU Cities Mission, UK Mission Zero, Cities Race to Zero/Race to Resilience, and Energy Cities all have some elements stressing local approaches involving public participation and citizen engagement, listed separately to governance but suggesting a more active role for citizens in parallel to existing formal governance processes. Here, citizens and civil society are widely seen across the corpus as part of the context/system in which cities are operating, as a body of stakeholders to communicate with and keep informed; namely, participatory stakeholder engagement is seen as an important element of governance but not necessarily central to its practice. There is a strong emphasis on inclusivity (cross-sectoral, widening/deepening) as a key to “transformation alliances” that leverage multi-stakeholder partnerships [16,39,40,75,120,121,125,127,128,129]. Transformation alliances are seen as a means to engage in value-driven (democracy, justice, trust, equity) ways [16,75,120,122,126,130] (as opposed to purely market-based) across sectors and diverse actors (including excluded or alternative voices/visions), with a strong orchestration role for local government to play in fostering trust and promoting accountability, legitimacy, justice, and equality-oriented outcomes that are citizen-centric [16,39,120,131]. The orchestrating role involves ensuring participation in decision-making (and improving capacities to do so) to capture diverse values, co-design solutions, improve the connectedness within the local innovation ecosystem, and build linkages at other levels (regional, national, etc.) [16,119,126].

Within the role of orchestrator, there is an emphasis on re-shaping and re-defining engagement strategies to build new alliances and modes of cooperation that require fundamental changes in the ways cities function, engage, develop knowledge, make decisions, and govern transitions: new capabilities for stakeholder engagement that both widen the quantity (inclusivity) and deepen the quality of engagement in key areas; holistic knowledge systems comprising multi-disciplinary and multisectoral contributions that link science and practitioner expertise with policymaking arenas; and new forms of meta governance capable of aligning sectors, issues, governance levels, and places (integrative) [16,120].

The role of the legitimacy of transition processes in the context of shifting political dynamics and power relations is stressed in much of the corpus, as is the potential for engrained institutional siloed mindsets/role patterns across the city administration and citizenry to inhibit, challenge, slow down, or reduce transformative change for sustainability. The key point of departure from traditional forms of participation (participation as legitimation of existing plans, or participation as performative consultation at individual points in time) is that participatory governance involves a range of activities/tools for continuous active listening, co-creating, and co-designing solutions with citizens and broader stakeholder coalitions, along with local governments becoming more responsive to the local context/needs overall.

3.4. Good Governance Dimension IV–Adaptivity

The core principles of sustainability that inform transition management approaches (i.e., non-linearity, co-evolution, emergence, diverse experiments, and multi-level dynamics) challenge the traditional governance processes of planning and control [75]. These experimental governance structures, norms, cultures, and processes, alongside a portfolio of transition interventions, require agility and flexibility (change from best and worst practices) on the part of local governments [16,39,40,75,119,122,123,125,127,130,132,133]. There is a focus here on iteratively applying new tools, working cultures, and models designed to co-evolve alongside more informal and de-centralized forums, platforms, and sites of governance and participation that are emerging/co-created [16,39,40,75,119,120,121,122,123,125,128,129,130,132]. Here, governance is not envisioned as a static set of processes and arrangements [75,119] but evolves in rapidly changing urban environments to best meet the needs of a system transition [125,126,127], including revised economic rules and legal frameworks for new business models (e.g., public–private partnerships) and broad mobilization of local administrations, communities, and actors to nurture new cultural movements [126,132].

There is a high degree of interconnection between reflexivity and adaptivity established in the corpus, and adaptive capacity in terms of leaving space, budget, and willingness to pivot (i.e., adapting to new insights/risks) is seen as important [121,126,130], both in terms of the durability and resilience of solutions [127], but also being responsive to and acting upon new insights (from mistakes, successes, participatory platforms, and emerging opportunities) [75,128].

This requires continuous work to ensure that knowledge production is representative of best (and worst) practices and that the practices and processes of governance remain open to a plurality of perspectives (participatory) [16,40,75,120,121,122,125,129]. Bridging organizations such as knowledge institutes or intermediaries (that are not government or market actors) and willful actors (change agents) within city administrations acting as facilitators and boundary spanners has a role to play here [75]. This bridging work also extends to using insights gleaned and risks assessed from scanning the landscape to adapt institutional structures, regulatory/planning frameworks and processes, and policies to address fragmentation, incoherence, and other barriers to collaboration needed for continuing transition management.

3.5. Good Governance Dimension V–Integrative

Cities are constrained by several contextual factors (structural, financial, institutional histories, and existing infrastructure) and have routines designed around shorter-term political, project, and budgetary cycles, yet continuous consensus/coalition building for sustainability transformation and adopting a more systems thinking-based portfolio approach requires a long-term view. More fundamental to the operational realities of climate action implementation, cities cite the fragmentation of responsibilities (silos) and a lack of coordination between administrative levels as common barriers, highlighting the need to build capacity for integrated ways of working (and linking different action plans into one overarching environmental strategy) [16,39,40,75,119,120,125,132]. This has, in part, spurred the creation of various governance tools (e.g., Climate Action Planning Framework and Climate City Contract) to develop governance processes that foster long-term consensus and commitment among actors at different levels.

Against this backdrop of challenges, cities are faced with the need to act on climate change now while also continuing to work with a variety of climate frameworks (Paris Agreement, SDGs, etc.) that have much longer time horizons. Cost of living and energy crises, amongst other issues, have added to the complexity of competing concerns cities must address, necessitating difficult decisions that integrate long- and short-term perspectives [16,75,122,127], both in terms of climate action and trade-offs in terms of balancing multiple change levers (economic, social, carbon) and levels of governance [39,40,119,125,126].

The need for better collaboration within and across traditional policy and administrative boundaries within and between cities and communities is emphasized, with the full life-cycle impacts of planned investments both for the built environment and the communities involved sufficiently taken into account from the outset [125]. This requires cities to involve stakeholders in approving, co-designing, and, in many cases, co-financing planned measures [39,40,75,119,120,122,129,130,133,134], namely, establishing the buy-in of local communities and actors through collective decision-making [16,121,123,125,127].

The overall emphasis is on looking beyond individual projects, climate actions, and actors to create a sense of direction for a shared long-term vision [16,75,121,123,125,127], the opportunities for which are revealed as first (short-term) steps are taken in the transition journey and the coalition widens [122]. There is again an emphasis on experimentation and learning here, requiring cities to create space for multi-modal collaborative roles [16,39,75,125,129,130,131], that is, actors in cities redefining and learning new ways of relating to one another [122], which includes re-thinking definitions of traditional experts and empowering previously uninvolved actors (and citizens) to share experiences and contribute knowledge and visions across diverse formal and informal modes of collaboration.

3.6. Good Governance Dimension VI–Radicality

There is an increased emphasis on radicality in terms of visioning but also collaboration, identifying the need for city officials/stakeholders to think beyond the realm of possibility (i.e., beyond typical planning process constraints/confines) [40,75,122,125,129]. This means bringing more creative thinking into the design of transformation and governance activities; engaging in new, divergent processes (without prescribed priorities and solutions, allowing for uncertainty); exploring themes for desired futures; and working through uncertainty and uneasy/uncomfortable tensions in the process by asking tough questions and creating new boxes/mindsets [75,121,122]. The focus is again on building the local ecosystem through holistic system innovation, but there is more emphasis on participation with/involving more radical voices/visions for a just/resilient future (i.e., alternative visions and voices) [16,39,40,75,122,125,126,127,132,134].

The central feature of radicality concerns ways to harness social and governance innovation to formulate a radical core (i.e., radical new ideas, objects, or actions with the potential to challenge/alter/replace existing institutions) and foster radical collaboration to support and accelerate radical long-term change (for definitions, see [75,122]) (for concept used, see [16,39,119,121,123,135]). There is growing consensus among global, regional, and national policy actors and intermediaries and cities themselves that local transformation should be a participatory process, not just about mobilizing stakeholders but also transforming from the inside of the city administration. Such transformations view cities as hubs leading innovation interventions by orienting, agenda-setting, activating, and reflecting with a strategic future perspective, ultimately connecting mainstream policymaking processes with the innovative practices and visionary ideas of pioneering entrepreneurs, activists, artists, citizens, and scientists. Designing and testing experimental governance and finance is seen as key to empowering cities to address existing governance flaws, mobilize resources, and accelerate action [16,39,40,119,121,122,125,126,127,128,131,132,134].

While the key elements of radical collaboration and radical core development are elaborated, there was considerable divergence across the corpus in the governance development pathways identified for cities, including the following:

(1)

The ways of governing leading to implementable, bankable climate neutrality plans (i.e., stakeholder identification, engagement, communication, and collaboration; information provision/knowledge development; on-the-ground collaboration dynamics; and establishing effective co-creation/production);

(2)

The structures of governance, including the allocation of budget and human resources for innovation managers, taskforces, or advisory boards/bodies responsible for consolidating and tracking innovation activities across the local government context (agreements, pilots, partnerships, etc.); and,

(3)

The capacities of governance, such as developing appropriate complex change initiative coordination, brokerage, engagement, and innovation systems development skills within local administrations and communities.

There is a strong overlap and reliance upon cities’ ability to effectively employ both participatory and integrative governance dimension practices to realize radicality to the degree and scale needed for transformation. However, innovative value capture methods—such as standardized co-benefits of climate action (public health, societal quality of life, etc.) and what constitutes a good local innovation ecosystem/effective systems innovation management, including ways to integrate mitigation and adaptation and complete participatory processes into policymaking arenas—are still in their infancy [16].

4. Discussion—Cities’ Net-Zero Journey and the Use of Procedural “Good Governance” Tools

4.1. The Emerging EU Cities Mission Governance Innovation Approach

Each of the tools in the mapping has value; however, the Climate City Contract (CCC) presents an interesting case, given it attempts to bring all dimensions together into a holistic theory of change designed to guide cities in activating an inclusive local ecosystem. Governance from the lens of cities’ net-zero futures refers to the tools and institutional arrangements through which local governments align current actions with a net-zero future and manage associated challenges [136]. The CCC, defined by the Mission Platform as “a governance innovation and tool” [137], is a recent example. As foregrounded, PGTs are co-determined or co-governed by different levels of governance and are used to affect how policies are formulated and implemented, including by modifying governance structures or changing how actors (i.e., citizens/stakeholders and governments) interact with each other [15,17].

In contrast to the CCC conceptual model, the final Cities Mission proposal put a strong emphasis on citizen engagement and co-benefits for citizens (REPAIR—participatory approaches); however, the Commission left out the proposed “by and for the citizens” add-on in the final Cities Mission documentation and there remains a gap in terms of the know-how and tools for involving stakeholders and citizens [68] (p. 17). As alluded to in Section 1.2, the Misson Platform was set up in large part to address implementation capacity, but early analysis highlighted an underrepresentation of substantial instruments and actions to support innovative governance models to develop capacity and interdepartmental delivery mechanisms in cities (activities represented under REPAIR—reflexivity) [68] (p. 43). Many recent Mission Platform activities, including the accumulating insights between Mission cities in the CCC themselves and emerging on the knowledge repository [65,138], are working to address this gap, but more can be done to advance both the theory and practice of innovative net-zero governance models.

Given current gaps, cities seeking to embark on or accelerate their net-zero journey are navigating a crowded, fragmented governance landscape flooded with initiatives and competing conceptions and recommended operationalizations of good governance. Procedural tools are a consolidation of existing knowledge. PGTs that are combined into instruments such as the CCC represent the artifacts of processes of policy formulation and governance. They are adopted by cities (often in combination) via participation in various networks, grant programs, and initiatives to gain access to resources and make sense of the complexities inherent in developing net-zero and related strategies.

In addition to the central mission approach, the CCC and supporting Mission Platform initiatives (the pilot program, public deliverables, and knowledge repository) [41,65,138] have been built by aggregating governance frameworks and governance-related concepts to guide a theory of change for aligning urban net-zero pathways (see Figure 6). This represents a helpful development and an opportunity to further understandings of urban governance through how these expanded components of the CCC are used by cities; however, as the examples in the Introduction point out, there is a lack of a unified approach to good governance. These initiatives are welcome and needed as test beds and demonstrators for identifying the best enabling conditions/governance innovation arrangements for net-zero. However, it is worth noting that the numerous procedural tools circulating alongside the ever-growing number of initiatives are equally subject to the same foibles of substantive policy tools, including the challenge of coherence. This has inspired work on policy mixes, which is beyond the scope of this contribution.

The emerging governance innovation theory of change embodied in the Cities Mission CCC and Mission Platform programs presents an interesting case as a mosaic of different frameworks. This highlights that existing governance frameworks, while helpful in various ways, only provide partial explanations of multiple applications of urban governance, making each insufficient on its own for a systemic governance innovation model. This is why the interrelation between procedural tools and local changes in institutional arrangements deserves more attention, particularly as calls for more holistic local governance have not been matched by advances in governance innovation theory that bridges existing siloes in governance thinking. These core governance concepts that collectively make up the experimental governance innovation approach emerging from the Mission Platform are expounded upon in

Table 4. Key governance concepts, applications, and limitations.

Governance Concept	Description	Application	Limitations
Multi-level perspective (Geels & Schot 2007) [147]	Innovation niches interact with and disrupt existing governance regimes, incumbent technologies, and socio-technical landscapes to eventually stabilize and become part of the dominant regimes/landscapes	Model inspired work to connect innovative experiments for participatory, just, and climate-neutral transformations at city level with national/EU platforms (e.g., Viable Cities, NetZeroCities) and a pillar of the Cities Mission’s “new city governance”	Describes dynamics of how governance innovations can become embedded but no means of open innovation management/iterations within niches/approaches
Transition management (Rotmans and Loorbach 2009; Loorbach et al., 2017) [139,140]	A reflexive change model to accelerate transitions via fundamental change in ways of doing (practices), ways of thinking (cultures), and ways of organizing (structures) based on a change management cycle used to implement strategies to influence societal transitions	Model inspired the design of more open, participatory models of governance, starting with a core transition team led by cities and expanding to involve key stakeholders and citizens (see [148])	Describes the organizational change model for relating and developing collaborative transition arenas steered by a transition team but does not account specifically for measuring and refining processes and interventions
Mission approach (Mazzucato 2017, 2018) [59,60]	An innovation-led policy approach to structure wicked problems/grand societal challenges into clear, targeted “missions” through political agenda setting and civic engagement in order to co-create, shape, and fix markets to be better aligned with public goods using a portfolio of projects and bottom-up experimentation	The systemic innovation approach (see [149]) inspired the EU to structure its research and innovation funding around Missions, e.g., Cities Mission, with the public sector co-creating interventions that cut across sectoral systems to unlock pathways and investment towards climate neutrality	Sets out a broad direction of travel to open up governance to more participatory/co-creative processes for developing public value interventions/policies but no specificity in dealing with the added complexity and administration of the stakeholder/civic engagement and management required
Institutional design of transnational municipal networks (Bansard et al., 2017; Bush, Bendlin and Fenton 2018) [88,141]	Governance through the lens of the institutional design of transnational municipal networks (TMNs) and its connection to quantified emission reduction targets/bridging the climate mitigation action gap left by inaction at national/global levels	This body of work has spurred greater attention to monitoring, reporting, and verification of climate mitigation actions of TMN member cities, for example, tracking sector-based interventions to reduce emissions measured by GHG indicators on platforms: MyCovenant (GCoM), CDP-ICLEI Track, etc.	Helpful in explaining the role, dynamics, and functions of TMNs in influencing the global climate governance regime but does not account for evaluating governance processes at the local level, including relational dynamics between different levels of governance
Co-benefits (Gouldson et al., 2018) [142]	The positive effects that a policy or measure aimed at one objective might have on other objectives, irrespective of the net effect on overall social welfare (IPCC, 2018) [148] (p. 32), [150]; Ancillary impacts or positive side-effects of, and integral to, climate mitigation or adaptation interventions [143]	Cities develop an economic case for decarbonizing using a portfolio approach: A dynamic set of complementary climate actions (e.g., policies, regulatory and organizational changes, programs, projects, investments) that deliberately looks to involve multiple actors and to unlock synergies and co-benefits between actions and across sectors	Helpful in supporting efforts to mainstream climate action in cities and leverage climate-related finance but ignores the political dimensions and power relations of how action portfolios are developed and governed
Social innovation (Caulier-Grice et al., 2012) [144]	A collaborative and human-centric approach for cities to cultivate an enabling ecosystem for net-zero by and with residents to co-design new ideas and solutions and change norms and systems of governance [151]; a form of innovation that is social in its ends and its means (Murray et al., 2010) [145] (also see [143,152])	Cities use learning-by-doing approaches that incorporate prototyping and quick experimentation alongside citizens via city labs or other participatory processes designed to meaningfully include end users/beneficiaries, address unmet local challenges, and incentivize mobilization around net-zero	Theorizes new relations between cities and citizens as a bottom-up complementarity to top-down approaches to net-zero but ignores the inherent power relations (similar to co-benefits) and does not account for the risks/conflicts associated with participation
Governance innovation (Anheier and Korreck, 2013) [153]	Novel rules, regulations, and approaches that seek to address a public problem in more efficacious and effective ways lead to better policy outcomes and enhance legitimacy [143] (p. 45)	Transition teams [148] co-led by cities transform traditional top-down governance to a network governance model and embrace a supportive, facilitator role to (1) build capacity across the local ecosystem of public, private, and civic actors; (2) co-develop and co-implement climate actions; and (3) build an added level of trust, alignment, and openness	Descriptive of embracing a more open/networked form of governance in novel ways connected to public problems and theorizes a general approach to co-developing solutions but lacks details of how to address the additional complexity
Radical collaboration (Net Zero Cities, 2022) [146]	Collaboration that is built into decision-making from the ground up, where stakeholders and citizens are seen as co-deciders and co-producers of outcomes rather than just as consultees. It needs a long-term commitment to building a culture of openness in government and other bodies and a financial commitment to supporting the social and digital infrastructure that can underpin that long-term engagement [143] (p. 46).	Cities employ long-term stakeholder and citizen engagement approaches that are designed to redefine the relationship and responsibility between cities and stakeholders/citizens towards a shared ownership model designed to activate an inclusive ecosystem for change (climate transition map) by building trust, ensuring transparency, continuously aligning actors’ expectations, and brokering compromises where needed via collective visioning (Net Zero Cities 2022) [146].	Provides a general framing that local governments should actively engage in delegating, co-operating, and facilitating styles of governance (Gerrits and Edelenbos 2004) [154] in line with EU public administration best practices (Thijs, N., and Staes, P., 2008; Hauser, F. (Ed.), 2017) [155,156] but ignores political/power dynamics (like co-benefits and social innovation) and the resources/capacity constraints of such engagement processes.

.

4.2. Common Governance Innovation Challenges and Emerging Questions

While this emerging picture of governance innovation design is a particular configuration of concepts aggregated towards a holistic theory of change, it highlights common elements and challenges of governing toward an inclusive local ecosystem capable of enabling net-zero transformation: citizen/stakeholder engagement, capacity and capabilities building for administrative reform and new modes of governance, mobilizing finance and resources (including knowledge), and alignment with other levels of governance. These challenges are common across the examples given in the Introduction, drawing attention to a need for a common language and yardstick for the values and capabilities required across the modes and their appropriateness for the issue(s) at hand, alongside a means of tracking, monitoring, and evaluating these approaches over time. The values associated with the various modes of governance point to not only (new) modes of governance but a multi-modal and multi-level approach: Combining traditional and new modes at different scales (local, regional, national, etc.) is needed. Determining whether and how those mix (and can be sustained, replicated, scaled up, etc.) and developing indicators and insights explaining when/how they work, why they fail, and simple, common principles for tapping synergies and addressing trade-offs are key. The REPAIR framework is a first step in this effort.

4.3. Limitations

The methodology used has three key limitations:

(1)

Formal documents can only offer a partial (and idealized) perspective, especially given the often hidden institutional and political dynamics at play across local contexts and settings. As such, there are limits on the extent to which deeper insights can be gleaned solely from a corpus of public documents.

(2)

The volume, due to the proliferation of PGTs, creates challenges for capturing and analyzing all existing PGTs comprehensively.

(3)

While attention was paid to local perspectives countenanced in the documents on the frameworks and concepts analyzed, the analysis lacks firsthand accounts of challenges, limitations, significance, etc.

Recognizing these limitations, this review has surfaced key dimensions, design principles, and operationalized conceptualizations of good governance as a foundational basis to allow for further refinement in future research. As such, this contribution provides a useful lens to help inform the development of more nuanced knowledge of good local governance by enabling a more unified and governance-specific approach to developing empirical insights conceptually, theoretically, and practically.

5. Conclusions

Cities face many challenges as they seek to accelerate the implementation of climate actions by testing new governance solutions and using existing and emerging PGTs to chart a course to just, net-zero futures. The experimentation with new forms of governance innovation designed to combine and align actors, digital platforms, knowledge from disparate sources, and climate action agendas for more place-based and co-creative approaches to urban transformation is fraught with messiness, uncertainty, contingency, and complexity. This article has sought to map a representative sample of 25 PGTs and unpack underlying logics and framings of good governance for transformation across four climate action mobilization and support initiatives involving cities. A nascent framework—REPAIR—was elaborated as a means of distinguishing the common design features of governance innovation design from the lens of understandings circulating in climate governance networks and their divergent theoretical roots.

In terms of implications for policy, there are three key points to consider. Firstly, the composite accounts of what constitutes good governance are disconnected from their application in practice [11]; that is, there is a need to understand, account for, and assess the appropriate application of different dimensions of governance to climate action, investment planning, mainstreaming, and other processes (e.g., institutional change, engagement, knowledge and resource development systems, etc.) rather than seeing governance as all-encompassing general concept to add-on to (or be a by-product of) planning and project processes.

Secondly, there is an implicit seamlessness/internal coherence across the espoused governance design dimensions identified, but as explored in the interrogation of the combined theoretical approaches embodied in the Mission Platform approach, there are tensions and trade-offs between them. Viewing governance through this more multi-dimensional lens reveals a need to identify priorities across a portfolio of climate actions in terms of the design, distribution, application, and assessment of governance interventions themselves (e.g., assemblies, digital engagement platforms, living labs, silo-breaking/boundary spanning work, etc.)—not all interventions can realistically be at the same level of intensity across broad portfolios of actions, nor should they be to be effective.

And lastly, as they are currently conceived, there are real gaps in how the collective advantages, opportunities, and promise of “ideal types” of innovative governance will be fulfilled, pointing to the need for more tailored theories of change/impact that address how coalition/mandate/local power building can be operationalized to draw upon the positives of more open, experimental governance innovation models while designing their implementation to account for their limitations and potential unanticipated negative feedback loops or effects.

More broadly, in terms of future research, it is hoped that the REPAIR framework will equip scholars with an analytical tool to explore and uncover the tensions between the following factors:

(1)

Net-zero as a broad appeal organizing construct with market-based and command and control logics and net-zero “badges” or credentialism (shallow, performative governance);

(2)

The possibilities of operationalizing deeper, more lasting, and transformative governance that accounts for alternative framings rooted in democratic, justice, and more resilience-oriented norms and visions.

Such investigations should contribute to the following objectives:

(1)

Understanding the role and opportunities/limitations of national policy platforms referred to in the Introduction on the localization of SDGs/carbon neutrality pathways;

(2)

Developing monitoring (and learning) systems specific to governance innovation, with a focus on developing/refining governance process indicators (REPAIR could provide a useful starting point for this);

(3)

Unpacking and understanding (wider/other sets of) procedural tools and their interactions/influence on governance practice, using REPAIR as an analytical tool alongside more in-depth engagement with key actors; and,

(4)

Developing empirical insights and evidence for the most effective tools or set of tools, i.e., are they fit for purposes of aligning with the national level, cohering with existing local processes, engaging/mobilizing citizens and stakeholders, etc.

These factors will lead to being able to differentiate between the constraints, limitations, and failings of dominant regime approaches and the barriers, possibilities, and limitations of emerging, experimental, and networked alternatives. A balanced approach to net-zero governance innovation in European cities and beyond depends on these considerations.