Green structure and sustainability — developing a tool for local planning

Abstract Local authorities face a great challenge in translating officially announced sustainability commitments into everyday management practices. With the objective of developing a tool for supporting such goal-to-practice translation processes, three primary tool criteria were formulated, and used to develop a guide on how to apply the tool. Subsequently, the tool was applied and evaluated in an interactive study involving the local authority of a Danish municipality. The first tool criterion concerns the organisation of the translation process. It states that in order to obtain a clear understanding of the unique local conditions, the tool shall be able to act as a bridge between different disciplines, and allow for direct collaboration between experts with context-independent knowledge and local administrators with context-dependent knowledge. The second criterion concerns the identification of sustainable management strategies. It states that the tool shall secure a thorough two-sided analysis of society’s claims on one side, and on the other side the ability of available resources to meet these claims in a sustainable way. The third criterion concerns the distribution of the results of the analysing phase. It states that in order to support dialogue and decision making across professional and societal boundaries, the identified claims and resources as well as the associated obstacles shall be presented in simple and preferably visual overviews. In testing the tool we focused on the ability of the municipality’s urban green structure (the resource) to contribute to sustainable management of organic waste, surface runoff and biodiversity (the claims). Based on the outcome of the test, and an interview survey with the participating local administrators, it is concluded that the tool criteria are sound. This is despite the fact that the test of the tool was not applied in full accordance with the tool guidelines. It is anticipated that the application of this tool can increase the speed and extent with which local authorities absorb and employ the concepts of sustainable development in their everyday management and planning tasks.