ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

Overcoming systemic governance barriers for city-civil society collaborations in urban green infrastructure: Lessons from 121 German cities

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Oral Track 05 | ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE

Speaker

Elizaveta Fakirova

Description

Urban green infrastructure (UGI) is widely recognised as an effective tool to address pressing environmental challenges. Successful UGI implementation depends on effective collaboration between city administrations and civil society, fostering democratic decision-making, aligning grassroots initiatives with municipal strategies, improving resource distribution, and ensuring more sustainable outcomes. However, city-civil society interactions remain inconsistent, often hindered by systemic governance barriers that emerge across different phases of UGI development, including idea development, implementation, and management.

Research conducted in Munich identified three major systemic barriers hindering city-civil society collaboration: limited communication at the idea development phase, knowledge ownership at the implementation phase, and ambiguity in responsibility frameworks during the management phase. Addressing these barriers requires a nuanced understanding of the governance conditions that either enable or hinder interactions, as well as the strategies needed to overcome them.

While much of the existing research on overcoming barriers to better collaboration between actors has focused on specific sizes of cities, this study advances existing research by examining governance barriers across 121 German cities through survey, complemented by semi-structured interviews with selected city representatives. By comparing municipalities of varying sizes, it investigates whether barriers identified in Munich persist across different governance contexts or vary based on local institutional structures. Additionally, it explores the methods used to overcome systemic governance barriers and examines the governance conditions that enable city-civil society interactions.

By analyzing these dynamics, the findings from Germany within this research provides practical insights for improving UGI governance and offers valuable lessons for cities facing similar challenges.