Four statements and a storyline – discourses in urban green transformation Open Access

As global society acknowledges the need for fundamental changes because of the climate crisis, local communities are addressing this need in diverse ways. This article uses discourse analysis to examine official documents and interviews with key actors in a Norwegian city that describes itself as future-oriented and ready for fundamental green transformation. The city is planning a large-scale urban green development project to improve mobility, infrastructure, waste treatment, and renovation. There are few critical voices and there is support from all political parties in the municipality. The findings indicate that the restructuring projects, although highly original, have a pragmatic foundation. Our findings illustrate how crisis communication can be transformed from a problem-oriented, prosaic, and even paralysing narrative to an optimistic, opportunistic, and imaginative storyline. However, the findings also reveal a ‘discourse coalition’ of technocrats and administrators characterised by competition, market and administrative logics, signalling the depoliticisation of local climate politics.

The climate change crisis has been perceived by many as the most critical political topic of our time (IPCC, 2018a, 2022). However, translating scientific knowledge of climate change into policies has proven to be a challenge. The scope of the seriousness and complexity of the situation can lead to paralysis in international, national, and local politics rather than action in these same domains (Carvalho, van Wessel, & Maeseele, 2017; Hargis, 2016). Thus, there is a need for policy discourses that are based on possibilities rather than obstacles alone. As a consequence of the complexity of causes, the temporal and spatial distance of many of the effects of climate change and the scope of changes needed to raise and gain support for climate policies may be difficult for governments at all levels (Bertolotti & Catellani, 2014). Due to the seriousness of the situation, societal transformation has, in recent years, been seen as necessary for meeting climate goals. The IPCC (2018b) describes transformation as the ‘A change in the fundamental attributes of natural and human systems’. They further define societal (or social) transformation as ‘A profound and often deliberate shift initiated by communities toward sustainability, facilitated by changes in individual and collective values and behaviours, and a fairer balance of political, cultural, and institutional power in society’ (p. 559). To be sustainable, this transformation is dependent on necessary political and democratic processes, such as open discourse, citizen engagement, and deliberation.

The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement highlights the importance of all levels of government participation in resolving this issue, particularly at the local level (Amundsen, Hovelsrud, Aall, Karlsson, & Westskog, 2018; Wang, Westskog, Selvig, Mygland, & Amundsen, 2016). Local authorities are regarded as having the potential to be front-runners in the process of transformation toward a low-emission society (Amundsen et al., 2018, p. 23). This awakens awareness of how local policymakers and institutions deal with these issues in their discussions and actions. Local-level views and practices have the potential to guide climate debates and policy at higher levels, thereby contributing to scaling efforts. This calls for attention to how ideas and knowledge are translated and framed from global in a local context. However, as climate policy is a global issue, local policy also tends to be top-down, based on global solutions at the local level (Dirix J., et al., 2013).

This article sheds light on how local authorities view and translate policy into statements and storylines for local change, using the Norwegian city of Bodø as a case study. The production of meaning in the processes of Bodø’s integration of climate change policy into its development plans and strategies receives particular attention. We looked for dominant discourses in the municipality’s ongoing ‘New City projects’ within the framework of environmental discourse. Hence, the study explores how a local community meets climate crisis policy and integrating it into aspects of and motives for urban transformation. Our focus has been on perception, understanding, and communication transformative changes as we searched for the most prominent drivers and ambitions for change. The objective was to illuminate how environmental discourse within a municipality deploys particular statements to frame a dominant storyline of future possibilities for the community. Our interest was mainly in how local governments discuss and deal with environmental issues.

To do this, we systematised the environmental statements that were the most prominent in this particular municipality and identified the main drivers for change in environmental orientation. The research questions were as follows.

• What are the leading arguments in the city’s green development policy?

• Do these arguments mirror major global environmental discourses?

• What mechanisms play a role in keeping the storyline in place?

Throughout the research process, a fourth question emerged:

• Based on the empirical data gathered, is there any suggestions of a depoliticisation of climate politics?

Cities produce more the 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide (IPCC, 2022). Consequently, cities are both the cause of and solution to our environmental issues (Sandell & Røe, 2017). Hajer and Versteeg (2018) state, ‘When it comes to the transition to a post-fossil future, the city is a crucial site of change’ (p. 2). This foresight is echoed by the scientific community, the EU, and the Norwegian government alike (Haarstad, 2017; Sandell & Røe, 2017; UN Habitat, 2007).

National and global policy frameworks for local climate policy are both important for Bodø. For example, local governments offered various economic incentives to prioritise greener politics by stimulating policies that promote smart, sustainable, and green cities. Possible funding for these strategies is an important context because it can function as a driver of change. Bodø’s Climate and Energy Plan for 2019–2031 states the following:

At the time of the study, the Arctic city of Bodø was, and is currently, in a state of transformation both materially and socially. For decades, the city was the air force capital of Norway, with a strategic geopolitical position within NATO. In 2012, the Norwegian parliament decided to close the air base in Bodø. After making this decision, Bodø negotiated compensation for the shutdown, relocation and rebuilding of the public airport. In 2017, the Norwegian government decided to contribute 2.4 billion NOK to this project (Regjeringen.no, 2017). This gave a boost to additional development projects (Mohus, 2018; Nilssen, 2019), the biggest and boldest of which was the construction of a smart, low-emission district near the city centre where the airport is currently located. Support for this project came from across the political spectrum – the conservative coalition initiated it in 2015 and the left coalition (from 2017) adopted it and carried it forward.

This study began when the municipality was in the process of launching its projects and had already begun to receive national and international attention from researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs (Dubbeling & Mossin, 2017). Municipal strategies for local development were repeatedly positioned within a green and sustainable framework (Bodø Municipality, 2017, 2019a). At that point in time, the city also decided to apply for status as a European Capital of Culture in 2024, which it was awarded in 2019 (European Commission, 2020). In 2018, when Bodø joined the smart city innovation cluster ‘Nordic Edge’, the plans were described as follows: ‘Smart Bodø is a large-scale urban development project. Zero emissions, green, and sustainable solutions for mobility, infrastructure, waste, and renovation are the aim of the new district’ (Nordic cluster, n.d.; Bodø Municipality, 2019a).

Considering all this, we find Bodø Municipality to be a particularly interesting case for a transformation study because the city became the site of one of the biggest development projects ever realised in Norway, with a view to transforming it from a former international military city to one of the smartest city in the world (Finne, 2017; Haugstad, 2018). This paper explores how environmental issues and climate-policy goals were integrated into the local community and communicated via media outputs, municipal plans, and interviews with central actors. To do so, it rests upon a systematic analysis of discursive statements and storylines related to the city’s projects. To further clarify our use of terms, such as discourse, statement, and storyline, we describe them below.

The term ‘discourse’ is described as the delimitation of reality through communication (Hajer, 2006). It encompasses knowledge, assumptions, ideas, and values, which collectively provide a common conceptual device and a shared way of viewing the world and the things in it (Dryzek, 2013). It is continuously produced and reproduced between actors within the same social landscape and is highly dependent on context (Hajer & Versteeg, 2005, p. 175; Van Dijk, 2006).

Discourse as a process creating common framing of problems and solutions, places great emphasis on the role of discourse in policymaking (Bacchi, 2000; Dryzek, 2013; Hajer & Versteeg, 2005), and discourse analysis offers an important methodological tool for understanding the logic behind policy actions (Hajer, 2006, p. 66).

In this study, the discursive level is practical local politics with its categories and framings of what is possible and what is not. Discourse can be understood both in an interpretive way and in the frame of critical realism. The latter suggests that there is always something (i.e. power) beneath the surface. To discuss the possible policy mechanisms and power relations behind statements and storylines, we began our analysis using John Dryzek’s environmental discourses in an interpretive mode. Following this, we adopted a critical approach to discourse analysis inspired by Maarten Hajer (2006), Joss, Sengers, Schraven, Caprotti, and Dayot (2019), and others. This turn in understanding discourse is important, as a crucial difference between these perspectives is that Dryzek’s concept is based primarily on Habermas’s use of discourse as an open and inclusive dialogue. In contrast, Hajer’s work has been inspired by Foucault’s critical understanding of discourse as power, exclusion, and framing. In this study, we view the combination of these understandings as particularly useful because it reflects how discourse is often understood in practice.

According to John Dryzek (2013), industrial societies are reliant on a strong expanding economy. At the same time, environmental problems indicate that a departure from economic growth is needed (Brundtland, 1987). Dryzek (2013) classifies main environmental discourses along two key dimensions: reformist or radical, and prosaic or imaginative (2013, p. 16). These dimensions can vary and different combinations lay the ground for different discourses. The reformist and prosaic variant is described as holding three distinct discourses, namely administrative rationalism, democratic pragmatism, and economic rationalism (2013, p. 18). As contrast, combinations of discourses characterised as imaginative and profound, are typically discourses of green radicalism. This category includes eco-feminism, deep ecology, and environmental justice approaches, all of which challenge or oppose the basic structure of industrial society. The distinction between these discourses rests on the agents that are expected to be in control of environmental policies: whether it is the expert, the market or the people. Resting on experts and/or markets can be seen as a departure for politics as democracy.

Furthermore, the analysis, which is built on the theory of post-politics, asks whether the processes we observe are examples of depoliticisation. Environmental politics has been criticised for the transfer of responsibility from the political system to the individual citizen or consumer and the increasing dominance of expert systems. The political – which can be understood as an open discursive space of controversy and engagement – is in this view increasingly colonised by technocratic logics, economic liberalism, and consensual framing (Kenis, 2019; Swyngedouw, 2019; Wilson & Swyngedouw, 2014). Even though the motives behind the storylines may be diverse, a non-intentional dynamic of moving in the same direction is necessary for results. ‘In post-politics, political contradictions are reduced to policy problems to be managed by experts and legitimated through participatory processes in which the scope of possible outcomes is narrowly defined in advance’ (Wilson & Swyngedouw, 2014, p. 6).

Following Flinders and Buller (2006), depoliticisation takes place through three tactical elements: an ‘institutional depoliticization’, a ‘rule-based depoliticization’, and a ‘preference shaping depoliticization’. In the last form of depoliticisation, these perspectives discuss the shaping preference mechanisms by resorting to communicative, discursive, rhetorical, and ideological strategies with the aim of justifying a political position and making it acceptable (Swyngedouw, 2011). This processes not only lowers public budgets but has also potential to label opponents as traditionalist, old-fashioned, ideological, or fundamentalist (De Nardis, 2017), and it does so through a reframing of what is at stake in terms of issues that can be solved through innovation. The market is the sphere in which firms and consultants (the champions of innovation) act. In this perspective, reducing the complexity through a ‘win-win’ imaginary is an original mediation between general and private interests, citizenship and profits. It would feed the depoliticisation of government with new forms of the depoliticisation of technocrats and market players. The latter are presented as capable of solving social problems. De Nardis uses smart cities as an example: ‘companies not only provide ways to decide how to deal with individual and collective needs, but also managerial models of strategic management to coordinate the optimisation of local resources and allocation of community funds’ (De Nardis, 2017, p. 347).

The link between the theoretical concepts and the empirical part of this study, that is, the implications of this way of analysing discursive statements, also provides the possibility of disclosing both the importance of communication and the significance of context, actors, motives, and coalitions. As discourses not always are enacted in a setting of consensual parties, nor are the settings equal, but instead produced and promoted to articulate, navigate, and impose norms, ideas, and belonging (Joss et al., 2019). These norms and ideas may in turn have a meta-narrative that tells a more global story of power and logic. According to Joss et al. (2019),

Discourses, therefore, often reflect hegemonic struggles between differing interests and interpretations, as exemplified by the dominant development discourse examined in this paper.

Storylines are narrative tools that can abbreviate complexity and that combine elements from different domains; this enables stories to be told and images to be created. Storylines include defining problem, solutions, and subject positions on the spectrum of information and knowledge.

As Hajer (2006) argues, discourse analysis examines the statements that form narratives. He employs the term storyline to refer to a condensed statement summarising complex narratives. Statements are understood as arguments, sentences or other acts of speech. It is crucial for analysis that statements be interpreted in line with the sender’s message, using a dialectic approach between closeness to and distance from the field of study. We follow Hajer’s (2006) argument that this form of analysis is built on interpretation, evaluating statements in terms of whether they ‘sound right’. This process is important in finding a main story line.

Storylines cluster knowledge and create networks and are often found to guide a policy process over a period of time; they are also ensembles of metaphors and statements executed by actors in both text and talk (Hajer & Versteeg, 2005; Teräväinen, 2010). Our research examines how discursive narratives and storylines are deployed by ‘discourse coalitions’ (Hajer, 1993, 1995) as a method of uncovering what interests and policies are at work by networks of actors (Joss et al., 2019). Inspired by Dryzek’s (2013) description of rhetorical devices, in this article, we define ‘statements’ as being ‘deployed to convince listeners or readers by putting a situation in a particular light’ (p. 19).

For the actors being studied, a storyline helps to unite (as in this case) a municipality undergoing rapid and fundamental change and can be its ‘socio-political resonance’. If politicians, planners, and administrative leaders (the coalition) agree on a common path, a good storyline can drive the creation of strategies and practical politics by providing a narrative that simplifies reality and enables diverse actors to find common ground, even on complex issues such as climate change (Suopajärvi, 2015).

Empirical evidence for this study was collected over the period of 2017–2019 when the city was in the start-up phase of implementing its new development strategy, as described above. We combined 11 qualitative interviews with actors within or in connection to the municipality and repeated observations (e.g. of workshops, meetings and formal presentations of plans and strategies) with a document analysis of official political documents, newspaper articles, and other media. The interviews involved participants from different fields across the policy and administrative domains in the municipality, including politicians, administrators, and governmental project partners and staff. The interview questions addressed professional perceptions and thoughts on what environmental and climate measures were feasible within the municipality. In addition, we searched for common or contrasting statements across interviews, media outputs, and official documents (Tables 1 and 2).

Primary data sources were from interviews and white paper documents.

It is important to note that the municipality and its representatives were in a particular state of mind during the data collection period. The deeply felt commitment to the New City – New Airport project tinted our data throughout the study. The project was discussed almost daily in the local newspapers, and a quick search in the biggest paper in the region showed over 1000 articles about ‘New city – New airport’ and ‘Smart City Bodø’ (see www.an.no).

Influenced by Hajer (2006), our data analysis covered five stages. First, we performed a literature review. Second, we identified and interviewed the municipality representatives. Third, we received feedback on our analysis from both the scientific community and the municipality. The fourth stage of the process entailed revisiting the interviews and documents (as well as new documents) and a final systematisation of the discourses and storylines in the material. The fifth and final stage entailed analysing the systematised data in relation to other studies and theories in the field.

The analysis revealed the basic entities recognised or constructed, assumptions about natural relationships, agents and their motives, metaphors, and other rhetorical devices. Guided by these components, we first identified key elements concerning interviewees’ ontological assumptions and their perceptions of themselves and other agents. We later used these key elements to categorise the data, which became central to the analysis and formed the basis for identifying what we believe to be the dominant environmental discourses and storylines within our case city.

We found that motives, argumentation, and rhetorical elements were highly interrelated in our data. Overall, our discourse analysis revealed four prominent statements and one main storyline, complemented by some counter-narratives and evidence of protests and deliberate disengagement from the dominant discourse. These are presented as statements in the next section of this paper.¹

In this section, we present four statements that emerged as central to the municipality’s transformation and that covered aspects of sustainable development and climate transformation framed by development projects.²

1. There is money in it

The first statement in our findings was related to economic incentives that play an important role in engaging in local climate policy. The national government’s use of economic enticements to promote environmental and climate policies seemed to awaken opportunistic activities in the municipality.

The same interviewee stated:

In addition to promoting the economic side of the city project, this is also an example of designing arguments for enthusiasm and motivation. This does not mean they do not believe it themselves: ‘This is future-oriented, sustainable, and there’s money in it!’ (interviewee XYZ).

This argument was related to the fact that climate change policy and sustainable development projects offering considerable funding opportunities from various sources (Norwegian Environment Agency, 2018). This would have meant to be able to transform Bodø into a leader of local climate policy, both nationally and internationally. External funding and attracting businesses were identified as important drivers.

The interviewees also discussed support grants for environmental measures and projects that benefitted larger municipalities:

Key elements of the statement 1 are market logic, prices, and assets, all of which resonate within the economic rationalism framework (Dryzek, 2013). To the economic rationalist, market mechanisms are the most effective instruments for solving environmental problems. This stimulates consumers to make environmentally friendly choices with such benefits as free parking and lower taxes derived from buying and owning an electric car instead of a fossil fuel-driven vehicle. In this discourse, the government’s role is primarily to facilitate and establish regulations under which the free market can thrive (Dryzek, 2013).

As suggested by a few of our interviewees, including the one cited above, the municipality’s role will simply be to introduce energy-efficient and low-emission solutions through new projects in order to promote low-emission technology, marketing it to the public as both profitable and trendy.

• 2

  Technology is so much fun

A second prominent statement in the municipality’s communication was the significant role of technological solutions. Technological optimism characterised this discourse, both generally and regarding the New City – New Airport project specifically. Climate and environmental policy was frequently emphasised in the documents and interviews. One of the municipalities’ strategic documents emphasises that

It is obvious that the smart city strategy is a driver of technological solutions, but it also accords with much of our data that reflects a technological optimism perspective. One of our interviewees expressed excitement when talking about technology: Many of our interviewees enthusiastically elaborated on how new technology was an essential element in the plans and strategies for the city’s development. Potentially, facilitating or creating new low-emission products could contribute to lowering emissions and result in global recognition: The joy of new technology is that it is both a tool for creating a sustainable future and an objective. Alternative discourses were presented as reactionary: It is not clear for us who these ‘some people’ are but besides being strawmen, there were some interviewees who talked about climate policy without referring to technology as the solution.

The promise of new technology was a prominent feature in many of our interviews and in the municipality’s different project presentations, often with science fiction-like illustrations of drones, autonomous vehicles, and even robot dogs.⁴ This view corresponds to Haarstad’s (2017) findings that technology can be seductive because it promises a future in which it solves environmental and social challenges.

Regardless of whether our interviewees looked at technology simply as a tool to solve environmental issues or regarded technology as a goal, their perspectives had elements of reformist and prosaic discourse, such as the Promethean response found in global discourse (Dryzek, 2013). The Promethean response also relates to the next discourse on trust in human capacities.

A strong driver of the municipality’s developmental plans and strategies, apparent in both the interviews and documents at the time of the study, was the need for experts and human resources. As stated by one interviewee, without employing expertise over time ‘you will lose’, suggesting that low emission and sustainability policies are competitive advantages for getting the best and brightest to come to Bodø:

It was sometimes difficult to say what the means and ends were in these arguments. Attracting competence was proposed by some interviewees as the sole path to progress, and there appeared to be a sense of prosperity in the idea of recruiting competence. A similar discourse within the municipality was the need for political backing. We combined these perspectives (experts, funding, and policy) into a singular discourse because they seemed to be closely intertwined: These perspectives resemble the administrative rationalism that ‘seeks to organize scientific and technical expertise into bureaucratic hierarchy in the service of the state’ in Dryzek’s analysis (2013, p. 88). He, among others, claims that administrative rationalism presumes that there are two complementary types of hierarchy: the subordination of the people and the domination of experts and management, which resembles what we found in our material. This point is important for our findings because we must ask if this narrative has the capacity to render all critique nothing but disruption and noise and if it is in line with theories of depoliticisation. We will return to this later.

The municipality’s central motivating factors were to acquire national and global interest, be acknowledged, and become an attractive city. The international attention they had already received – from planning experts, the scientific community, and others – was highlighted by many interviewees, which can be summed up in this phrase: competition for international significance.

The fourth statement was the drive to promote Bodø’s attractiveness. Growth and competition were inherent elements of most foundations of Bodø’s strategies, in both official municipal plans and newspaper articles. These motives were also prominent in the interviews.

Innovation and attractiveness were often mentioned in the same sentence. The interviews and documents revealed a readiness to transform Bodø into an attractive city by using expressions such as ‘magnet’, ‘spearhead’, and ‘the smartest city in the Arctic’ (Bodø, 2017). When Bodø was ranked the most attractive Norwegian city in 2016 (Regjeringen.no, 2016), the boost in self-esteem was significant. Ambitions concerning how to continuously promote the city and municipality also in relation to its environmental policy were conveyed as follows:

As the quote above suggests, when asked about environmental issues the conversation often shifted to such subjects as attractiveness, innovation, and growth. Natural surroundings were more often perceived as capital to be used in marketing than as valuable in and of themselves. The unique position in the Arctic was seen as an advantage rather than a challenge: To make an Arctic city climate neutral was seen as ‘mission impossible’; thus, success would be something to use as an important symbol nationally and internationally. With statements such as this, the transformation of the Bodø Municipality was presented as a competition, where growth was inherent and innovation paralleled climate and environmental measures. During our study, it became evident that addressing climate and environmental issues could yield profit and that creating a green profile could become a competitive advantage (Bansal & Roth, 2000). As one of our informants suggested, Bodø has the potential to become a frontrunner of green transformation: This statement clearly reflects the ecological modernisation framework (Dryzek, 2013), which highlights the benefits and necessity of economic growth, among other things, viewing it as a major precondition for progress, innovation, and consequent environmental utility. Finally, we observed that a global city development discourse regularly trumped local deliberations (Joss et al., 2019).

In summary, these four statements had aspects of prosaic, imaginative, and reformist approaches wrapped in a package of eagerness and hope. However, they indicated few or no radical foundations for change. As we see it, statement four, although locally anchored, was part of a global storyline. This is in line with Joss et al.’s (2019) findings that smart city discourses are a ‘global discourse network’; in other words, they are a collection of locally contextualised but globally interconnected discourses.

Based on these statements, the first topic in the main storyline has an optimistic and opportunistic undertone. The future, according to the municipality and its close allies, is bright and prosperous. The concept of climate change has, through a collective process, been translated into a narrative of opportunity for Bodø Municipality. Generally, there seemed to be an unwillingness to communicate worries or concerns regarding climate change challenges and threats. A common theme among our interviewees was the link between technological development, environmental measures, and profit, and long-term investments in environmentally friendly technological innovations were considered the most cost-effective over time. The ongoing New City–New Airport project was presented as an opportunity to implement such innovations. The project would make it possible for the municipality to take centre stage in the development phase by attracting businesses and bright minds and allow it to take part in the final phase of production by promoting and distributing new and innovative products and services, ultimately establishing the reputation of being an environmentally progressive frontrunner. Interestingly enough, this was based on the assumption that visible environmental policy is attractive to outsiders.

These perspectives are also highlighted in the municipality’s strategic plan (Bodø Municipality, 2017). By facilitating and focusing on the businesses, innovations, and entrepreneurs in the region, the municipality was pursuing opportunities for growth. The strategic plan uses the term ‘sustainable growth’ (Bodø Municipality, 2017, p. 6), not ‘development’, which corresponds with other findings regarding smart cities. This aligns with Haarstad’s (2017) study of a smart city where a smart and sustainable urban transition was framed as a pathway of ‘increased efficiency and the creation of market opportunities, rather than reduced consumption’ (p. 431).

Even though Bodø’s politicians were the first in Norway to state that there is a global climate crisis (Landstad, 2019), the central actors in our interviews used ‘climate change’ and ‘sustainability’ as generic descriptors to denote ‘good’ urban development (Joss et al., 2019). If anything, the idea of an environmental crisis had to be read between the lines or was left an unspoken premise of policy strategies, thus playing only a peripheral role. It is important to emphasise that the main storyline can be viewed as the one told by the city’s elite and the project owners. This finding is in line with other studies, and Kohout and Kopp (2020) state; ‘Most European cities have been influenced by waves of urban idealism spread from leading urban thinkers to governing and planning elites.’ (p. 3)

As we have shown, Bodø’s storyline consists of four prominent statements. Most of these statements fall within the problem-solving paradigm, being reformist with incremental changes or adjustments to traditional industrialism and prosaic by accepting the status quo, both politically and economically (Dryzek, 2013). It is interesting to note that concepts such as sustainable development, environmental friendliness, and low emissions have been given positive connotations and are particularly related to attractiveness. This discourse seems to have moved beyond the 1980s and 1990s growth versus preservation dichotomy, in which the growth-oriented side had little or no interest in environmental politics.

However, as mentioned above, some undercurrents were observed in our interview materials. Narratives and statements that could be located outside the mainstream were used by people outside the ‘inner circle’ of professionals, planners, and politicians. This was signified by statements related to globally and future-oriented solidarity, intimacy with nature, and hope for changes in attitudes through upbringing:

We found a range of clear value statements that were radical in imagination but showed little or no links with policy. Some basic elements and metaphors were in line with ‘green radicalism’ (Dryzek, 2013), however, these alternative voices were largely excluded from primary policy documents or media coverage of the project.

This raises interesting questions about why and how these processes of inclusion and exclusion occur, and also what role these mechanisms play in keeping the storyline in place. The discursive level and convention may be important for understanding our findings because most interviewees appeared to take real ownership of the project. This may be understood in the context of Kohout and Kopp’s (2020) idea that ‘increasing commodification, professionalisation, and bureaucratisation of urban development, studies, and planning has further entrenched the privileged role of elites and experts in developing new urban environments’ (p. 15).

In line with this understanding, our data demonstrate how the combination of pragmatism and administrative and economic rationalism creates a storyline of opportunism and optimism. We believe that the need to frame the story makes it necessary to quell doubts or criticism.

Most of the ideas presented by the interviewees seemed to have undergone a thorough deliberative processes within the municipal administration as they seem to have a common understanding of the topics discussed in the interviews. However, there are some signs of greater openness to the public. In 2019–2021, different arrangements were made that allowed engagement from all concerned parties, including New-City festivals,⁵ city labs, open debates, and ‘future scenario workshops’. Parts of the administration even moved out of their offices and worked in an open location at the city library (Bodø Municipality, 2019a, 2019b). However, all of this appeared only to create excitement about what had already been planned, and it was, only to a small degree, open for critical debate. This lack of, or inability to open discursive space of controversy and engagement (Wilson & Swyngedouw, 2014) can be interpreted as clear evidence of a democratic deficit that marginalises or excludes alternative narratives. As Swyngedouw (2007) states:

This said, debates about Bodø’s future is ongoing, and future research might find alternative narratives and discourses occupying a more prominent position.

In the introduction, we presented some aspects of local environmental discourse, as closely related to global, as motivational and as built on coalitions Our findings corroborate with all these aspects. These tendencies, however, show several sides of the same issue – or story, and illuminate how climate policy is challenging at local level.

Local environmental and climate discourses are not necessarily founded on specific local goals related to environmental ambitions. We find this to be especially apparent in Bodø Municipality’s green transformation, reflecting a prevailing tendency in environmental discourses globally (Dryzek, 2013). Besides meeting global goals, local climate policies provide opportunities for continued growth, innovation, and attractiveness of place. This is strengthened by technological optimism, which suggests that technological innovation will solve a multi-faceted set of challenges in the future. In this study, this discourse was also interlinked with and anchored to the hope that technological advances would make Bodø an attractive city. The key players appeared to be strikingly unanimous in this regard and to share the main message. Hence, we interpret this as a discourse coalition (Hajer & Versteeg, 2005; Joss et al., 2019), which is strong enough to keep out critical voices to stay on track. In addition, our findings indicated that such tendencies constitute an effective form of depoliticisation. Deliberative democracy, open discourse and participation is challenging even if tried from the start of local climate project, as the goals are often set at an international level, and almost impossible if imposed after the discourses has been framed.

This is a study of a single city, conducted over a relatively short period of time. As a result, its findings must be understood as a historical snapshot that can nevertheless reveal important starting/turning points in the development of Bodø’s discursive landscape. Other case studies conducted at different times might yield different results. However, this paper has shown that the ability to mobilise central actors and resources is an important early step in the transformation process, highlighting the significance of the capacity for sense-making and inspirational discourse. Other studies have also emphasised the importance of cultural skills like visioning, marketing, motivating, and enabling collective attribution (Perkmann & Spicer, 2007; Westley et al., 2013), mirroring our results. In this study, the main storyline was concerned more with hope than with preventing the climate crisis. However, according to Haarstad (2017) and Joss et al. (2019), sustainability and climate issues often become generic concepts that are wrapped in technological optimism and growth. It seems that a prosperous future is what motivated the central actors in the municipality.

The main storyline, according to the four statements presented above, is not, however, a story of radical green transformation. Rather, it is a description of a municipality implementing incremental adjustments within an existing political and economic paradigm. This study shows that the ongoing climate crisis can be utilised as a driver and motivation for change, particularly when it is interconnected with sustainable development, funding resources, and increased attractiveness. This framing seems to remove potential policy paralysis, promoting development and progress instead. Questions still remain if such a process can be environmentally and socially sustainable in practice. Further research on this particular case may provide answers, especially if it involves assessments of both climate gas reductions and democratic inclusion and counter-movements. The latter might include aspects of (citizen) participation in local climate policy design, specifically tensions between formal and informal local democracy, and expert regimes.

The authors will thank the reviewers for their thorough and good advice to improve the paper. A thank you also to our colleagues in the RCN finances project TRANSFORM: Local transformation towards a low-emission society.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).