Bracing urban governance against climate crises: How to integrate high reliability into strategic decision‐making?

Abstract Turning cities socio‐ecologically resilient is one of the pressing challenges in the face of ongoing climate change and accompanying extreme weather events. Despite concentrated efforts within specific urban domains, there exists a necessity for a coordinating mechanism that can concurrently monitor signals of slowly maturing long‐term crises, such as global warming and swiftly intervene to mitigate urgent threats, such as catastrophic floods. This article explores the potential of high reliability principles to inform such a governance mechanism through a novel policy operations room (POR) framework, conceptualizing urban strategic goals as critical infrastructure. We analyze the conditions for integrating elements from top‐down crisis management with bottom‐up participatory scenario exercises and policy simulations in urban governance. Based on pre‐ and post‐POR interviews and meeting transcripts in three Finnish cities we examine the regulative, normative, and cognitive aspects of integration. The analysis indicates that the implementation of a high reliability framework in urban settings can provide valuable support for addressing challenges induced by climate change.