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While strengthening public–private interplay is expected to improve the climate profile of urban planning in terms of mitigation and adaptation, less is known about the practice of such new interactive modes of governing. The paper critically examines the role, benefits and limitations of extended public–private interplay in developing a new housing district in Sweden. The developer dialogue between municipal officials and property developers confirms mutual interests, shared understandings and the added value of interacting. However, the closer the dialogue comes to settling agreements, the more difficult it gets for municipal officials to steer the process and its outcomes in favor of climate proofing. Complications with adapting to the new interactive setting means that municipal officials balance between acting as facilitators and/or regulators and property developers between acting as partners, competitors and/or defenders. Refining steering-strategies for sustaining commitments and securing formal agreements are pertinent for using public–private interplay to climate-proof urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore how the capacity to integrate environmental sustainability in Swedish regional development programming has evolved over time, particularly focusing on what facilitates and restricts change in different stages of implementation. The study builds on focus group and individual interviews in four Swedish regions carried out in 2005 and 2011. The results suggest temporary and partial, rather than enduring and substantial, environmental policy integration (EPI). In 2005 the main challenges were to allocate support, focus and prioritise beyond the national policy rhetoric of regional sustainable development, to identify regional applications beyond singular ‘pockets of good practice’ and to spread ownership and engagement for EPI from specific ambassadors to organisational mainstreaming. In 2011 we found evidence of a more mainstreamed approach of regional sustainable development, but with new challenges of policy diffusion and sectorisation as well as a strong sense of projectification. There is a need to develop arenas and processes for inter-sectoral exchange, interaction and learning to achieve a more systematic change – which is, in essence, what policy integration is all about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]