Checklist for the DECIDE & COMMIT stage

As said, this stage operationalises the vision or comparable long-term plan in a strategy and proposed actions for each of its objectives. The main question at this stage of DECIDE & COMMIT is: “How are we going to meet these long-term objectives by working out this vision in a strategy per objective?”

To answer this question, a couple of TO DO’s are to be checked. To start with, the generic vision or comparable long-term plan must be translated into strategy, policies and timeframe per objective. This indicates roughly the direction to go. Subsequently, the roles of main stakeholders should be defined more precise by consulting them. After this, it must be made sure that the proposed strategies and policies are well-aligned with other local targets or local general long-term plans, such as the Sustainable Energy (and Climate) Action Plans developed under the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, and regional, national, EU and UN targets as SDGs.

Following, concrete ways forward, or “routes”, must be determined for each strategy and/or policy: ways forward to achieve the targets of strategy and/or policy. After that, the most promising “routes” should be jointly prioritised, together with the stakeholders. This might lead to a couple of iterations within this TO DO, or going back to previous TO DO’s in this stage. Once the concrete actions are chosen, the next TO DO is to ensure that the city administration and the key stakeholders allocate resources for further development and preparation of plans, at this stage mostly capacity. Consecutively, internal and external teams should be formed by engaging different departments, organizing interdepartmental collaboration to overcome siloes, and capacity building. Finally, at this stage, a first exploration of different financial schemes and possibilities is needed.

Commonly used tools for the DECIDE & COMMIT stage are regular interdepartmental meetings, workshops and sessions, innovative brainstorming methods, i.e. tree of knowledge, best practice benchmarking, consultation of city networks as ICLEI and Eurocities, field trips and site visits, conference visits, financial readiness check, assignments to consultants, collaboration with local universities or research institutes, and capacity-building activities or tools provided by the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and energy (including the interactive funding guide available at https://www.covenantofMayors. eu/support/funding.html). For setting the priorities the Baseline Emissions Inventory developed as a part of the SECAPs, provides an indication of the sectors emitting most of the GHG/CO2 emissions in the cities. Standards which can support the stage of DECIDE & COMMIT are ISO 37100 Terms and Definition, ISO 37101 Quality Management Systems Approach, ISO 37105 Description of Cities, ISO 37106 Strategies for Long-term Vision.

Eventually, the TO DO’s of this stage result in commitment of city and stakeholders on the strategy and priority of selected actions.

Question

How do we see the city we are living in, in 20-30-50 years from now on?