Bracing urban governance against climate crises: How to integrate high reliability into strategic decision-making?

Abstract

Turning cities socio-ecologically resilient is one of the pressing challenges in the face of ongoing climate change and accompanying extreme weather events. Despite concentrated efforts within specific urban domains, there exists a necessity for a coordinating mechanism that can concurrently monitor signals of slowly maturing long-term crises, such as global warming and swiftly intervene to mitigate urgent threats, such as catastrophic floods. This article explores the potential of high reliability principles to inform such a governance mechanism through a novel policy operations room (POR) framework, conceptualizing urban strategic goals as critical infrastructure. We analyze the conditions for integrating elements from top-down crisis management with bottom-up participatory scenario exercises and policy simulations in urban governance. Based on pre- and post-POR interviews and meeting transcripts in three Finnish cities we examine the regulative, normative, and cognitive aspects of integration. The analysis indicates that the implementation of a high reliability framework in urban settings can provide valuable support for addressing challenges induced by climate change.