Building blocks for a (successful) mission approach – Lessons from Amsterdam and Stockholm

Acknowledging that cities play a key role in climate change adaptation, the European Union (EU) introduced the Cities Mission to accelerate urban climate action. This mission approach is a governance innovation based on research and innovation that aims to create innovative forms of collaboration and residents’ engagement. Concretely, the EU selected 100 cities to develop Climate City Contracts that include “clear and visible” commitments and involve citizens, research organizations and the private sector. These cities are supported by a Mission Platform (managed by NetZeroCities) through technical, regulatory and financial assistance to formulate and implement actions. While this approach is expected to impact climate neutrality goals in European cities, there is still a limited understanding of the actors driving these collaborative governance strategies to foster innovations. Moreover, it remains unclear what the key factors are for successfully formulating and implementing the cities’ missions in the Climate City Contracts. To address this gap, we employ a who-how-what analytical framework in the EU Cities Mission approach with a hierarchy, market and network governance modes perspective (see Lupova-Henry & Dotti 2019). Specifically, we study the mission approach of two cities: Amsterdam and Stockholm. Based on document review and semi-structured interviews with policymakers in these cities, we identified who, what and how both cities’ missions are governed, and what the perceived success factors are for the formulation and implementation of the Climate City Contracts. Therewith, the paper contributes to our understanding of the characteristics and structure of primary actors in the EU Cities Mission, the operationalization of this governance innovation and the essential components thereof. These results include key lessons from Amsterdam and Stockholm to other European cities and provide empirical insights into the challenges and opportunities of the mission approach while critically reflecting on its added value as governance innovation.