Navigating the Transition Towards Climate-Neutral Cities: Transformative Governance and the Sustainable Mobility Transition in Bratislava

Sammanfattning

In the current era of worsening climate impacts on a global scale the drive for sustainable solutions to address the climate crisis has increased across all levels of governance. Globally cities house most of the population leading to significant impacts on the environment with urban mobility representing one of the major sources of GHG emissions. As cities start to implement solutions to address these challenges this study explores the role of Transition Management (TM) principles in the processes of transformation towards sustainable mobility governance in Bratislava, Slovakia. More specifically it examines how envisioning, collaboration, experimentation and learning practices are applied within the city's governance methods. Using a qualitative case study design, empirical data was collected through eleven semi-structured expert interviews with professionals from the fields of transport, urban planning and governance. The data was then analysed by combining deductive and inductive thematic analysis methods. The findings show that while Bratislava has established a clearly defined vision for sustainable mobility and displays alignment with TM principles in the envisioning and collaboration stages, significant gaps were identified in the experimentation and learning stages. The study concludes that experimentation lacks a formal definition and regulatory framework, monitoring and evaluation practices are underdeveloped, and learning is not embedded across the governance system. These limitations, combined with the structural fragmentation across governance levels and an implementation gap between strategic ambition and the capacity to act, considerably affect the necessary conditions for systemic transformation. The study highlights the need for integration of participative processes, the establishment of experimentation as a governance tool, and the standardisation of monitoring and evaluation frameworks to advance sustainable mobility transformations in Bratislava. The findings contribute both to the academic understanding of TM application in urban governance contexts and to the practical knowledge available to policymakers navigating sustainability transitions within comparable environments.