The “Butterfly” of Local Transformation: How Cities Build Capacity for Sustainability

Perijá Tapaculo

11-11-2025

“A ripple knows the stone,” Kingfisher says. “I do not count fish; I feel them. I do not hoard. I do not waste. I do not forget.”
Zhuangzi smiles: “Then let the river be your teacher, and you its student. Eat, but do not devour. Fly, but do not flee. Be, but do not become too much.”

In Kingfisherish Wandering [1]

© Wix

Cities are pivotal to tackling climate change, but their success depends on the capacities of public agencies, businesses, and civil society to act together [2,3]. This study develops and tests a framework for transformative capacity by comparing 12 Norwegian initiatives at the local scale—city-led, market-led, and civil-society-led—to see what actually helps places shift toward sustainability [4]. The authors integrate insights from sustainability transitions and collaborative governance to capture both the direction of change (missions, strategies) and the institutions that enable it.

The framework identifies four contextual capacities—ideational, institutional, adaptive, and experimental—and two foundational capacities, holistic leadership and co-creation, summarized in a “Butterfly model.” Ideational capacity turns broad visions (e.g., SDGs, net-zero) into actionable local goals that mobilize multiple actors. Institutional capacity creates an “organizational backbone” (e.g., climate budgets, dedicated units, procurement rules) and engages veto players to expand room for change. Adaptive capacity “nests” projects and scales solutions across levels and sectors to rework sedimented systems such as energy, transport, and land use. Experimental capacity relies on iterative, co-created pilots; here, civil society often leads with independent idealism and agile problem-solving that spur both firms and governments to move.

Across cases, leadership stitches efforts together—translating visions, coordinating across departments, and timing interventions—while co-creation provides open platforms and trust-based collaboration that unlock additional resources. The result is not a single pathway but a repertoire cities can adapt to context and turbulence.

Ideational capacity cultivates shared meanings and long-term purpose, while co-creation socializes these values into everyday practice—activities that can raise communities’ Nature Quotient by aligning cognition, norms, and behavior with ecological realities. As people participate in experiments (e.g., fossil-free construction or climate-neutral districts), they internalize pro-environmental values, reinforcing collective agency and social trust—key ingredients for durable, peace-promoting sustainability cultures [5,6].

Thus, to build local sustainability, it is crucial to invest in leadership and co-creation that convert visions into institutions, nest projects across scales, and keep experimenting—especially with civil society as a frontrunner.

References

[1] Nguyen MH. (2025). Kingfisherish Wandering. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FVLLLXNW/

[2] Loorbach DA. (2022). Designing radical transitions: a plea for a new governance culture to empower deep transformative change. City, Territory and Architecture, 9, 30. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-022-00176-z

[3] Bulkeley H. (2021). Climate changed urban futures: environmental politics in the anthropocene city. Environmental Politics, 30 (1–2), 266-284. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.1880713

[4] Hofstad, H, Vedeld T, Haarstad H. (2026). Building local sustainability: Identifying critical transformative capacities. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 58, 101043. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2025.101043

[5] Tran TT. (2025). Flying beyond didacticism: The creative environmental vision of ‘Wild Wise Weird’. Young Voices of Science. https://youngvoicesofscience.org/?p=1963

[6] Vuong QH, Nguyen MH, La VP. (2022). The mindsponge and BMF analytics for innovative thinking in social sciences and humanities. Walter de Gruyter GmbH.