Do ambitious cities value collaboration in climate action? Insights from the first group of cities pursuing climate neutrality

Achieving climate neutrality demands effective urban climate governance and stakeholders' mobilisation. This study conducts a comprehensive analysis of 362 cities' Expressions of Interest (EOI) submitted for the European Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission to examine the prevalence and nature of stakeholder engagement in urban climate action. The analysis involves a combination of descriptive statistics, relationship analysis via Gephi software, and a customised text mining technique (pre-processing, frequency analysis, and clustering). The cities, with populations ranging from 11,148 to 15,000,000 and predominantly located in Europe, reveal a landscape of collaboration efforts that is somewhat proportional to the city size. Citizens and national governments are the principal stakeholders (83 %) with higher governance levels primarily involved in policy and regulation formulation as well as financial support. Over 70 % of cities engage academia, research institutions, and the private sector as key stakeholders, primarily in research and innovation activities. Furthermore, 72.6 % of cities participate actively in inter-city collaborations or are members of relevant networks. Contrastingly, utilities, energy communities, financial institutions, vulnerable groups, and trade unions exhibit suboptimal integration, engaged by less than half of the cities. Optimising collaboration for urban climate neutrality necessitates an enhanced integration of diverse stakeholders, particularly those proximal to marginalised groups, mass mobilisation to leverage the synergistic potential of inter-sectoral and inter-city collaborations, and a transition from predominantly educational initiatives to more comprehensive, participatory engagement practices. • 362 cities reveal key stakeholders and their roles in climate action. • Citizens, higher government levels, academia, and private sector lead in engagement. • Financial institutions and vulnerable groups need to be more involved. • Inter-city networks and peer exchange are crucial for climate neutrality learning. • Tailored citizen engagement practices in climate policies are a necessity.