Introduction

In this chapter, we study the integration of ecological sustainability and social welfare concerns in local politics and public governance, that is, at the site of local government. Local governments are critical actors in the public governing of cities and represent the institutionalised arena for democratic and authoritative decision making at the local level and in urban settings. While the authority of local governments varies significantly across jurisdictions, city governors are critical players in the multi-level governance architecture. The role of cities and local municipalities ranges from being ‘implementers’ of national (and EU) policies to ‘local champions’ of city politics, for example, on urban sustainability and climate governance (see Bulkeley and Betsill, 2005; Hughes, 2017; van der Heijden, 2018, 2019). In countries with substantial local autonomy, such as Sweden (Pierre, 2015), city councils are the main site for governing local public affairs and organising institutional responses to societal needs such as social welfare, housing, schooling, elderly care, urban planning and technical services and infrastructure for energy, waste handling, water management and transport. For handling such functions and implementing local policies, city administrations have grown into large public institutions. Despite being subject to significant changes over time, including decentralisation of welfare policy (Johansson and Panican, 2016) and environmental management (Montin, 2009), city administrations are, as a public institution, characterised by high degrees of specialisation and silo organisation. In practice, this implies various forms of inertia.

Besides the institutional role of local governments, city governors and administrators increasingly act beyond their formal authority to promote city developments and support local initiatives in response to contemporary challenges such as social cleavages and environmental change. This has made cities become essential sites for urban experimentation and test beds through which local responses and solutions emerge (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013; Marvin et al, 2018; Stripple and Bulkeley, 2019), notably on urban sustainability and on climate change where cities account for at least 70 per cent of global carbon emissions (Seto et al, 2014; UN Habitat, 2018; van der Heijden, 2018).

This chapter aims to explore how city governments and administrations work to integrate ecological and social concerns in practice and discuss the potential for eco-social integration in city governance. We investigate the extent and forms of eco-social integration, what shape it takes and where it takes place and the challenges of integrating ecological and social welfare concerns. We relate this to the concepts of inertia, emergence and transformation and find a dominating picture of inertia with persistent silos within city administrations, contradicting the established rhetoric of integration in the broader sustainability discourse. Still, we see clear signs of emergence with eco-social integration in specific policy areas and urban development projects, and increasingly so in more recent years.

The chapter builds on material from comparative case studies in the three Swedish cities of Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm. The study, conducted in 2019, was based on semi-structured interviews with civil servants and a text analysis of over 20 strategic documents (see Khan et al, 2020). In the meantime, this study has been updated by analysing more recent policy documents. Additionally, new material has been used from a recent case study of the city of Lund, a neighbouring city to Malmö, and its recent attempts to reorganise and integrate its ecological and social sustainability strategies.

Local social welfare and environmental policies

Sweden’s political and administrative system is divided into three levels: national, regional and municipal (Pierre, 2015; Norén Bretzer, 2021). At the local level, 290 municipalities of varying sizes are distributed across 21 regions. The three largest municipalities are the cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, which in turn are centrally placed in the three main metropolitan areas in Sweden. The city councils in these municipalities also organise the country’s largest municipal public administrations. In Sweden, local governments at the municipal level have a reasonably broad autonomy and responsibility for public service in several sectors. The autonomy is most visible through the municipal planning monopoly, which gives local governments substantial control over land-use planning, with state authorities eligible to override in questions of national interest only.

Social welfare and environment management are important policy areas for municipalities, although they have different histories and follow different policy logics. When it comes to welfare, municipalities in Sweden have the responsibility for crucial social welfare services such as elderly care, childcare and education in primary and secondary school, as well as for many public services such as household waste, energy provision, water and sanitation, housing and urban infrastructure, as well as health and environmental inspection (Montin and Granberg, 2021; Norén Bretzer, 2021). In this regard, local municipalities reflect the local face of the welfare state and have, over time, been delegated more and more responsibilities, particularly for social welfare services (Montin, 2015; Johansson and Panican, 2016). Most of these services are regulated by national laws that stipulate rights and responsibilities and are meant to guarantee an equivalent level of service irrespective of where in the country you live.

Municipalities have been responsible for local health protection since the early 20th century. With the environmental turn in the late 1960s (Larsson Heidenblad, 2021), municipal health protection authorities were delegated responsibilities also for environmental protection (Bro, 2000). In the early 1990s, ecological sustainability concerns became important local issues after the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987) introduced and popularised the concept of sustainable development (Hildingsson, 2010). After the UNCED conference in Rio 1992, the Local Agenda 21 movement swept the country and pointed out local authorities as crucial actors in addressing sustainability concerns (Eckerberg et al, 1998; Lafferty and Meadowcroft, 2000; Lafferty, 2001; Montin and Granberg, 2021). As a result, more comprehensive environmental management plans and strategies were formulated and adopted in many cities. Later, climate change became a main policy issue, together with several more local environmental issues such as eutrophication, air pollution, biodiversity and degradation of farmland.

While social welfare is regulated top down, local environmental and climate governance has largely been developed in a bottom-up fashion with fairly loose governance from the national level. From the start, it has been a strategic issue in municipalities guided by an environmental strategy programme. The sustainability discourse has mainly been framed in terms of ecological sustainability. Although social welfare is essential for local governments, it has not been framed as part of the sustainability discourse nor as a strategic issue for local governments. This has changed in recent years with accentuated problems of social segregation and increasing inequalities in public health and well-being.

Parallel to this, the adoption in 2015 of Agenda 2030 and the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) has led to a renewed focus on the connections between different aspects of sustainability (UNGA, 2015). The SDGs are since 2017 incorporated into Swedish national policy, and in 2020, the government appointed a national Agenda 2030 coordinator to promote their implementation among various actors, including cities and municipalities across the country. However, the Agenda 2030 coordinator’s assignment expired in March 2024 as the new government did not prolong the mandate. Still, municipalities are in the process of developing organisational structures for sustainability governance that are based on the Agenda 2030 model.

Eco-social integration in policy strategies and municipal organisation

Our material indicates that ecological and social welfare concerns are seen as significant challenges facing the metropolitan cities in Sweden. Ecological sustainability is addressed as a central concern in all three municipalities. In particular, climate change is high on the agenda, and both how climate mitigation can be achieved and how cities need to become more robust and resilient to the impacts of climate change are discussed. On the social side, the main issues discussed are social segregation, inequality and differences in public health, and all cities have conducted special commission inquiries focusing on this aspect.

However, there is an apparent lack of integration across the main policy strategies. This becomes most evident in policy documents related to environmental management (environmental programmes, climate strategies) or social welfare concerns (social sustainability reports). The environmental programmes and the climate strategies give limited attention to social issues (Malmö, 2009, 2021a; Gothenburg, 2013, 2021a; Stockholm, 2015a, 2020). The social effects of environmental measures are seldom expressed, nor are differences in ecological footprints between various social groups. In the introduction to these strategic policy documents, the connection is mentioned in general terms, which represents indications of a general ambition to integrate ecological, social and developmental concerns in urban governance. However, when it comes to specific measures, only a few explicit connections are being made; for example, in Malmö regarding noise, air pollution, health effects from bicycling and climate adaptation for vulnerable groups (Malmö, 2009, 2021a); in Stockholm regarding energy efficiency measures and the risk of increased rents (Stockholm, 2015a, 2020); and in Gothenburg about green spaces and local food production (Gothenburg, 2013, 2021a). One interpretation of the limited attention to social concerns is that the environmental programmes explicitly focus on environmental impacts while leaving social issues to other arenas. This is confirmed by our interviews, in which environmental officers stated a wish to protect their core area of expertise and were reluctant to consider too many other aspects for fear of losing sight of the environmental objectives. As expressed by one environmental officer, in this case in Gothenburg, ‘After all, it is our mission to represent the ecological dimension’. The social sustainability reports in the three cities focus exclusively on social and welfare issues, and very few connections are made to environmental aspects of social justice or inequality. In Malmö, the social sustainability report from 2014 (Malmö, 2014a) had two main recommendations: first, to establish a social investment policy to reduce differences in health and living conditions, and, second, to increase democratic governance and participation at the local level. In Gothenburg and Stockholm, the social sustainability reports focused similarly on health and living conditions without connecting this to ecological concerns (Gothenburg, 2009a, Stockholm, 2015b). In a recent follow-up assessment of Malmö’s work on social sustainability (WSP, 2020a), the lack of attention to other sustainability concerns is emphasised, and, for example, an indicator model for integrated sustainability assessments is suggested. Similar comprehensive sustainability assessments are practised in all studied cities.

Regarding urban planning, the comprehensive master plans represent more deliberate attempts to integrate social and environmental issues. This is not surprising since the function of the comprehensive plan is to outline the developmental plans for future land use in the city, considering all relevant aspects. In all three cities, both environmental and social issues are prevalent when strategies and specific measures are discussed in the comprehensive plans (Gothenburg, 2009b; Malmö, 2014b; Stockholm, 2018). Environmental goals relate to, for example, increased use of renewable energies, shifts towards more sustainable modes of transport, preservation of green areas, farmland and urban ecosystems and improved air quality. Social goals include, for example, planning to decrease social segregation, increasing house construction and ensuring safety and liveability in the built environment. In most cases, however, ecological and social aspects are discussed separately even though apparent connections exist, for example, regarding a sustainable and just transport system, a functional mix in areas and mixes in types of dwellings, equal access to green areas and social impacts of energy efficiency measures in rental apartments. These connections are sometimes mentioned in the comprehensive master plans. Still, they are not detailed to any great extent, and solutions and measures are not addressed as a package or in an integrated fashion. A few exemptions to this are more specific programmes, such as the urban greening strategy in Gothenburg (2022) and the urban mobility plan in Malmö (2016).

The interviews confirm the perspective of urban planning as an arena with the potential for integrating ecological, social and developmental concerns. The urban planning process seems to constitute a municipal practice where environmental and social issues are raised and considered. A Social Welfare Officer in Malmö revealed that they do not have much direct cooperation with the environmental office, but how they get in contact through their respective involvement in the planning process, which the planning office coordinates: ‘The planning office has that responsibility … it is in this arena where we can gather and where environmental issues and social issues can meet’ (Interview, Social Welfare Officer, Malmö). Environmental officers in Malmö and Gothenburg confirm this, stressing the planning office’s specific role in collecting viewpoints from different departments and emphasising the importance of them providing ecological perspectives in the internal remittal processes. Other departments reflect other aspects and dimensions.

Agenda 2030 as a tool for integration

In all three cities, local Agenda 2030 work has been established, and the SDGs are used as tools to address ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability in an integrated and cross-sectional manner. The coordination of Agenda 2030 is centrally placed in all three cities within the city executive office, and an essential function is coordinating and putting together annual local sustainability assessments. In the sustainability reports for Stockholm and Gothenburg, an evaluation of each of the 17 SDGs is made, and the goal is discussed. The report from Stockholm (2021) discusses synergies with other goals, allowing for a cross-sectional analysis and eco-social integration. In the report from Gothenburg (2021b), strategies relevant to the different goals are listed, making it possible to identify links between strategies. The report from Malmö (2021b) has a different structure and is divided into social, ecological and economic sustainability. Even if all three aspects are covered in the same report, the three dimensions are treated separately, and few interlinkages are made between them. The experience with the local implementation of Agenda 2030 shows that it holds the potential to be an essential tool for integrating different aspects of sustainable development. Still, it is yet too early to assess the effects in practice. In the aftermath of the Swedish national elections in 2022, the government is downgrading sustainability concerns. This includes the work on the 2030 agenda and funding for national coordination. This is due to both changed financial priorities and a political reorientation influenced by neoconservative and populist sentiments. The city councils in the three cities in focus here are, by contrast, controlled by red–green majorities and are still expressing ecological and social sustainability as critical concerns for their operations and local city developments. However, how well these concerns will be integrated into practice remains to be seen.

A case of local eco-social integration

In the city of Lund, which neighbours Malmö, we find a recent development of increased strategic integration between ecological and social sustainability, which partly contrasts with the experiences of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. Since 2020, Lund has had an overarching policy for sustainable development that addresses ecological and social sustainability (Lund, 2020, 2021). There are two main policy programmes, one for ecological and one for social sustainability. Both policy programmes have an equal standing and follow a similar structure as they have been established as part of the same policy process. While the programme for ecological sustainability contains only a few references to social aspects, the programme for social sustainability entails several references to environmental aspects and more of a discussion about eco-social integration. Some examples include active transport modes being viewed as beneficial for public health and the environment, as well as access to green spaces and public transport.

Eco-social integration is also visible in the sustainability work organisation in the Lund municipality. Within the central local council office (‘Kommunkontoret’), a unit for sustainable development has been devoted to the chief responsibility for coordinating the sustainability work in the city administration, including developing programmes for ecological and social sustainability. Thus, strategic work on ecological and social sustainability is placed centrally. Lund has 11 municipal offices, including, for example, the environmental protection and health administration, the planning office, the technical administration office, the service administration, the social services office and the children, school and education administrations. This is similar to most municipalities in Sweden. Within each administration office, one person was appointed to coordinate the ecological and social sustainability work. These employees organise the day-to-day work and are responsible for reporting on activities and monitoring selected sustainability indicators. Thus, eco-social integration is organised in the central administration, and in the administrations that carry out municipal work.

Emerging eco-social integration in specific projects and policy areas

Though the general picture in the three cities is the separation of ecological and social dimensions of sustainability at an overarching strategic level, we find examples of quite developed integration in specific projects and policy areas. This confirms the impression that eco-social integration occurs either in an ad hoc fashion or is experimented with in a project-based manner. When respondents were asked to reflect on where integration occurs, a recurring answer was in urban development projects in socially problematic areas or new neighbourhoods. In the words of a sustainable development strategist in Malmö, ‘It [integration] occurs in the pilot projects, it is there it happens. But in comparison to our gigantic production factory, it is on the margins’. In general, integration is viewed as more feasible in specific projects since there are often additional resources devoted to cooperation and since participants get time to work focused on one project and have the opportunity to get to know each other and build trust among participants. ‘I would say that so far we are better in projects than in day-to-day work. Cooperation is a challenge, and it requires more time to go beyond yourself and manage such cooperation’ (Interview, Social Welfare Officer, Malmö). In all three cities, there are examples of urban regeneration projects in suburbs or urban districts characterised by social problems such as poverty, segregation, unemployment and criminality. These projects usually have a strong social focus, and in some cases, an important feature has been measures that seek to combine both social and environmental goals, for example, in Järva (Stockholm), Lindängen (Malmö) and Backa (Gothenburg). Examples of eco-social integration in these areas are energy efficiency retrofitting with a social profile, participatory renewable energy projects, improved bicycle infrastructure, bicycle courses for women with various ethnic backgrounds, urban farming and improved access to green spaces and parks.

In addition, we find examples of specific policy areas where the integration between social and environmental aspects has come a long way. In Malmö, the 2016 Transport and Mobility Plan has an equal focus on a transport system with lower environmental impact that contributes to a more inclusive and less segregated city (Malmö, 2016). The second chapter, titled ‘Människan’ (the human dimension), focuses on equality, segregation, gender aspects, traffic safety and involvement in planning. The third chapter discusses how more environmentally sustainable transport patterns could be developed, focusing on walking, bicycling and public transport. In the fourth chapter, titled ‘Staden’ (the city), the two dimensions are merged in terms of, for example, ideas on how to design city streets to provide a good living environment for the inhabitants and promote more sustainable modes of transport. The links between ecological and social concerns in the transport sector have been explored in previous research. For instance, Gössling (2016) shows that there are often considerable injustices in urban transport systems in terms of, for example, exposure to noise, air pollution and accidents, and he argues for a transformation to more sustainable transport systems to be motivated from a justice perspective. Martens (2017), however, warns that sustainable transport planning risks perpetuating existing inequalities since much policy is devoted to persuading car drivers, often higher-income earners, to shift to public transport and bicycling while neglecting the transport needs of poorer communities.

In Gothenburg, the Green Strategy contains social and ecological goals that are given equal standing (Gothenburg, 2022). Social targets for social cohesion and economic targets for ecosystem services are addressed on par with ecological targets for biodiversity and the preservation of robust and coherent green structures. The social goals include equality in access to green areas and parks and goals linked to positive health impacts from recreation. Although the Green Strategy is primarily geared towards ecological objectives, social aspects are addressed throughout the document. Previous research has shown negative equity impacts of urban greening projects in cities if social aspects are not considered since they benefit affluent communities disproportionately (Wolch et al, 2014) and cause distributional injustices (Anguelovski et al, 2022). Other policy areas where eco-social integration could be relevant include urban planning, buildings, energy, food, consumption and waste.

Focus on synergies and localised issues

Our respondents mainly conceptualise the connection between ecological and social concerns as a synergetic relationship, that is, environmental measures reinforce and improve social conditions. This is confirmed in the policy documents. Examples include the positive impacts of public transport and bicycling on public health and reduced carbon emissions; building regulations and inspection requirements promoting energy-efficient housing and better living conditions; and urban green areas that are positive for urban biodiversity and improved health effects. Respondents also state that striving for synergy and win-win solutions in urban planning is essential. At the same time, some of the respondents acknowledge that there can be conflicts between ecological and social objectives and view such tensions as critical to consider. Examples of potential conflicts and tensions are gentrification effects of energy retrofitting (causing higher rents), environmental standards for kindergartens versus the need for new kindergartens or the construction of new housing blocks versus preservation of green areas. Many respondents saw economic restrictions as a critical challenge and stated that some conflicts between social and environmental priorities could be solved with more financial resources. Generally, the types of social effects addressed when linked to environmental strategies are most often health issues.

The literature on sustainable welfare and eco-social integration has mainly emphasised general and global environmental issues, notably climate change (Koch and Mont, 2016; Gough, 2017, 2020). On the contrary, we find that eco-social integration at the urban level is mainly concerned with localised environmental issues and their relations to social welfare and public health. It is striking that the clearest examples of eco-social integration are found in urban regeneration projects where social problems are prevalent alongside local environmental problems. Examples of localised environmental issues are related to rain and storm water management, access to green spaces, improvement of local living environments and experiments with urban farming. Measures relating to these issues often have a vital social element, and social objectives are the driving component, while positive environmental effects are more of an add-on and beneficial side effect. There are other examples of eco-social integration where climate measures are included. Though not common, these relate to, for example, sustainable transport, changes in travel habits and energy efficiency measures in housing. Many climate-related measures tend to be mainly driven by environmental or technical offices, where the connection to social aspects is often loose. Thus, when it comes to, for example, renewable energy, energy efficiency, transport, waste and electricity use in households, there is not much focus on social aspects. Instead, such areas are often characterised by techno-economic considerations and measures motivated by ecological concerns. Partly, this could be explained by the guaranteed energy supply in Sweden lowering the risks for energy poverty, otherwise being a critical social concern in many countries.

Two issues emphasised as central to sustainable welfare are equity concerns and the environmental effects of consumption and lifestyles (Murphy, 2012; Gough, 2017). Equity is deemed central to managing the distributional effects of environmental burden. Limitations on emissions and resource use necessitate mechanisms of burden sharing. Sustainable welfare furthermore questions present consumption levels and their associated resource use and calls for a renewed view on human needs satisfaction, well-being and its connection to material welfare (Gough, 2017; Helne and Hirvilammi, 2022). In our material, we find a reluctance in the cities to engage with these aspects. However, recent developments indicate that things might be starting to change. The first material for this chapter was collected in 2019. Then, we did not find much consideration of distributive and equity effects, neither in the policy documents nor in the interviews. Connections between environmental and social aspects were not considered, and there was no systematic analysis of the possible social impact of environmental measures, for example, regarding adverse distributional effects or which groups are targeted or affected. Notably, concepts like double or triple injustice (Gough, 2017) – that is, that vulnerable groups are more affected by climate change and policy measures to mitigate it, while they are least responsible for causing it – were not noticed concerning climate change or other environmental effects. Social Welfare Officers expressed more reflective views on the social issues related to city environmental management.

In a follow-up study from 2023 and 2024, we found that the cities of Malmö and Lund had started to consider more systematically distributional effects of environmental impacts and the varying consumption and emission levels of different social groups and neighbourhoods. One example is urban planning in Lund and the comprehensive master plan. In 2020, the planning office commissioned a consultancy company to analyse the main urban development areas in the corresponding comprehensive plan. The report focused on climate mitigation and equal living conditions simultaneously (WSP, 2020b). First, an analysis was made of how the current situation in the municipality affected ecological and social sustainability, specifically concerning carbon emissions and equality in living conditions. This was followed by an analysis of how the plans for future expansion were expected to impact these two aspects. These parallel analyses highlighted possible conflicts and synergies between climate and equity. The commissioned analysis can be seen as a pilot study in the municipality, and the same method can be used for future planning. There is ongoing work to revise the comprehensive master plan scheduled for 2025. The municipal planning office is further developing the integration of social and ecological parameters in the assessment of what effects different development plans are likely to have.

An essential prerequisite to introducing measures on equity is having relevant information. Therefore, work is needed to map socioeconomic differences in the municipality and relate this to various environmental indicators such as exposure to noise, pollution and environmental risks (for example, heatwaves, flooding) and access to environmental goods such as nature areas, parks and sustainable transportation forms. A further mapping relates to how the contribution to emissions and resource use is distributed among inhabitants and geographic areas. This is facilitated by a tool developed by a research group at the Stockholm Environment Institute where climate impacts of household consumption can be measured and compared on a fine-grained geographical scale down to postcodes (Axelsson et al, 2022). Although at an early stage, our studies indicate how Lund and Malmö have started to conduct this kind of data collection and mapping. Further municipalities and regions, including Gothenburg, have recently adopted local climate targets to reduce their consumption-based carbon emissions, for which such data will be critical. Collecting other relevant data is also essential, as it allows us to further capture the integration of ecological and social concerns. While monitoring ecological indicators has become an established practice and sociodemographic and socioeconomic data are used more frequently in urban planning, integrated analyses and sustainability reporting are still novel practices that remain to be established as an integral part of the day-to-day work of city administrations.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have examined the integration of ecological sustainability and social welfare concerns in local governments in Sweden. First of all, we find an overall picture of inertia. Even though there is a rhetoric of integration in the general formulation of sustainable development, there is still limited eco-social integration. The main reason for this is that municipal administrations tend to be highly specialised and organised in a silo fashion due to institutional traditions of compartmentalisation and professionalisation, generating inertia both in organisational and cognitive terms. A related barrier to integration is specialisation and the differences in professional language and culture between civil servants in the environmental and social administrations. Social officers stated that they sometimes had difficulties understanding the terminology and concepts used by environmental experts. At the same time, environmental officers revealed a wary attitude towards including too many other aspects in their assessments for fear of losing focus on ecological concerns. Lack of resources is a further barrier primarily visible in administrations’ day-to-day work. At the same time, targeted projects often had more access to the resources necessary for integration and collaboration across administrative boundaries. However, the temporary nature of urban experimentation and development projects constitutes a challenge regarding the mandate commissioned and means of institutional learning.

Although inertia dominates, we see signs of emergence in urban experimentation and specific policy areas. Urban development projects constitute a site for eco-social integration. This is partly because ecological and social perspectives are equally visible in urban development, but more so because of the extra resources that come with targeted projects and organisational flexibility, allowing for organisational forms that break with the traditional silo structure. There are also examples of policy strategies indicating increased eco-social integration, such as the policy programme for urban greening in Gothenburg and Lund and the sustainable mobility strategy in Malmö. However, these are, for the time being, best understood as islands of integration that have not (yet) broadly impacted the standard operations of city governance and local government.

So, are there any potential pathways towards eco-social transformation in city governance? Implementing Agenda 2030 and the current emphasis on social sustainability could be a tool for increased eco-social integration. As we have seen, the city administrations use the implementation of the 17 SDGs to make an integrated assessment of synergies and conflicts between different aspects of sustainability. This could be a first step towards more systematic eco-social integration. Furthermore, coordinating the Agenda 2030 work is centrally placed in all three cities within the city executive office, facilitating impact and coordination across city administrations. Monitoring practices and the emerging more comprehensive sustainability assessments may reinforce this.

The city of Lund is an exciting example of how ecological and social dimensions of sustainability are integrated at the strategic and organisational level since it partly contrasts with the experience in the three metropolitan cities. While still in an early phase, Lund is intentionally trying to integrate its ecological and social sustainability policy strategies and increasing integration within and between different municipal administrations. The Lund case raises questions about what might explain the difference in outcome: is this to do with Lund being a pioneering municipality when it comes to sustainability, or is it simply an issue about the size of the city administration being smaller than its metropolitan counterparts? While the former also applies to the three metropolitan cities we have studied, the latter might make it easier to overcome inertia and find ways to work around the silo organisation of municipal administrations.

There has, finally, been a slight move in the types of issues being dealt with. To date, eco-social integration has mainly focused on synergies, localised environmental problems and the relations between the environment and public health. However, there are also indications of other issues attracting attention and slowly getting addressed, such as equity and justice aspects of ecological transformations and questioning consumption habits and affluent lifestyles. While this broadens the scope of eco-social integration, it might, as well, open new avenues towards more transformative pathways.