Climate action in cities requires tackling multiple crises simultaneously and systemically: ecological crisis and biodiversity loss, pandemics, mental and physical health challenges, new trade realities and fragile supply chains, migration and changing population demographics, technological development, and economic uncertainty.
In this rapidly changing world, it is necessary to make actions for climate change mitigation and emission reduction more adaptive so they can steer towards long-term goals despite uncertainty. This requires understanding the future your city wants and anticipating different potential futures pathways towards it.
While humans have always speculated about the future, the formalisation of futures thinking as a discipline emerged in the mid-20th century, particularly in the context of post-war technological and geopolitical uncertainty. It has since developed an academic grounding, making futures thinking a recognised field of inquiry that employs rigorous methodologies. It has also moved beyond its early association with elite institutions and large corporations, and is now routinely used by national governments, international organisations, and at the local level.
Foresight and anticipation approaches help cities to navigate the complexity and uncertainty in climate transition.
- Foresight is a systematic way of thinking about the future(s) with a view to influence its course of development.
- Anticipatory climate governance refers to the governance system - structures, processes, methods, capacities, cultures, mindsets, strategies - that are used in a certain context (e.g. a city government or ecosystem) to steer and act towards a desired future for the climate and nature, including the ability to do so adaptively over time.
Extending anticipation from adaptation to mitigation
In cities’ climate work, future-orientedness is unevenly distributed:
- In adaptation work, future-oriented approaches are inherently present as cities are constantly preparing for the consequences of the changing climate. For example, cities have developed established practices and expertise in assessing climate risks, conducting vulnerability assessments and building adaptation strategies.
- In mitigation work, future-oriented approaches and tools are less present. Although cities’ climate roadmaps typically describe pathways towards carbon neutrality which can involve scenario work, these roadmaps tend to be descriptions of pathways for reaching maximum emission reductions in optimal situations, rather than connecting closely to actions today. The assumptions behind pathways, and the related uncertainties, are in many cases not scrutinised in detail. Technical, political, economic, societal and other enabling conditions and the uncertainty related with all of them may receive little attention.
Building future-oriented action: methods and use cases
There is always pressure to focus only on the loudest problems with the most urgent short-term deadlines. But to tackle complex problems like the climate crisis, we need to recognise the connections between our current actions and the future they are working towards, and reflect on how we may want that to change. Foresight can help you with questions you have such as:
- “What could happen in the future?”
- “What would we like to happen in the future?”
- “What are the consequences of our actions (for our city)?”
- “How can we get to our desired future?”
- “What does this mean for the long-term?”
- “How can we prepare for the unexpected and stay on our path?
There are various foresight and anticipation methods cities can leverage for their climate actions, depending on their need. These include Horizon scanning, Futures table, Scenario building, Backcasting, Three Horizons, the Futures wheel, and more.
However, individual methods always need to be applied consciously within a process or context. These methods can be used to serve different purposes, but some use cases for applying foresight and anticipation methods in the mitigation action include:
- Vision-setting: For cities wanting to align the city around a common vision and goals.
- Foresight-driven roadmaps: For cities wanting to ensure actions will steer towards long-term goals.
- Adaptive planning: For cities wanting to understand how to steer action over time.
- Citizen Co-creation and Storytelling: For cities wanting to ensure their residents are part of the transition.
To learn more about methods and use cases, including resources to apply them, read the NetZeroCities guidebook on Building Adaptive Climate Action in Cities via Anticipatory Climate Governance.
Learning from Mission Cities
The NetZeroCities project conducted a study of four European cities on how they use foresight and anticipation in their cities’ climate change mitigation and which barriers and opportunities they identified in adopting foresight-oriented approaches. The cities analysed were Tampere (Finland), Umeå (Sweden), Valencia (Spain), and Parma (Italy). The research of the four case study cities was conducted in 2024–2025.
Here are some shared takeaways the four cities:
- Application of anticipatory governance in city level planning is emerging as an important area of development and capacity building.
- However, these approaches are not institutionalised, and cities were in the process of establishing or grounding anticipatory climate governance practices in their work.
- Anticipatory governance has the potential to assist cities in better navigating and preparing for potential challenges and disruptions while planning future development.
- The cities express interest in developing and implementing more sophisticated adaptive planning methods and tools to enhance their climate work.
- The cities highlighted constraints in human, financial, and time resources as barriers to implementing anticipatory governance effectively.
For more information, please read the case study report at the NetZeroCities knowledge repository.
Starting today…
Anticipatory Climate Governance recognises that the most impactful use of foresight is beyond methods and isolated use cases. A city that has embraced an anticipatory approach to its climate work doesn’t only utilise it in a single project, process, initiative, or engagement. Instead, it weaves anticipation methods, culture, and mindsets throughout its work and structure, creating a city that can adapt in the present to steer towards the future.
This kind of city isn’t built in a day. And many cities are already practicing anticipation - whether it is called that or is being used only in some places. Although Anticipatory Climate Governance is an opportunity beyond only using a single specific method, this is often a starting point for getting to grips with applying foresight in reality. We suggest that this should then lead to investigating other aspects of an anticipatory approach in climate work.
To learn more about how you can start today - from the methods and use cases above, to other simple practices and reflection questions that can help you start this journey - see the NetZeroCities guidebook on Building Adaptive Climate Action in Cities via Anticipatory Climate Governance.