Unpacking the practice and prospects of multifunctional adaptation in the urban built environment of ten Swedish frontrunner cities

Progressing with climate adaptation in dense urban built environments has proved challenging. Making adaptation multifunctional has been proposed as a promising approach, allowing effective use of limited urban space by simultaneously meeting important societal needs. However, there is still uncertainty about the extent to which multifunctionality is actively planned, designed, and implemented in urban areas and what factors influence implementation uptake. This paper analytically unpacks the practice and prospects of multifunctional adaptation in urban built environments, illustrating empirical lessons from ten Swedish cities. We conclude that multifunctional adaptation in practical examples tends to focus more on manifesting and effectively using existing green space for multiple functions instead of undoing and transforming traditional grey urban environments to enhance greening and adding new green qualities in the urban landscape. Moreover, city size proves important when considering both motivations and implementation uptake. Larger cities motivate multifunctional adaptation by political expectations and lack of available space, whereas in smaller cities motivations include their contribution to urban attractiveness and public acceptance of adaptation measures. Many factors identified in previous studies as influencing implementation uptake also prove valid for multifunctional urban built environment adaptation. However, there is evidence of substantial size-related differences in the analysis, with some factors being more manageable in smaller and others in larger cities. This suggests the importance of analytically distinguishing city size for the sake of research accuracy, policy evaluation and design, to be able to make the most of ongoing multifunctional adaptation in dense and complex urban built environments. • Ensuring climate adaptation in urban built environments proves to be challenging. • Multifunctional adaptation allows more effective use of limited urban space. • Practical multifunctional measures focus on effectively using existing green space. • Transforming traditional grey urban environments by adding green is less common. • City size impacts motivations and conditions for implementing multifunctionality.