Collaborative municipal governance and planning : A study about flood risk management in the Gothenburg region

Abstract: Due to climate change many regions across the world now have to work with flood risk. The purpose of this master thesis is to understand, from a collaborative governance perspective, how the municipalities City of Gothenburg, City of Mölndal, Kungsbacka municipality, Kungälv municipality and Lerum municipality are working with flood risk management and municipal collaborative planning. The thesis’ aim is to understand how these municipalities are working with each other against flood risk management as well as if they are collaborating with each other in any other aspect within the urban planning context. The thesis is conducted in a qualitative manner and the empirical data was collected through qualitative interviews and qualitative content analysis. The theoretical framework is based on collaborative governance, as well as “municipal collaboration”, “resilience” and “glocal/glocality”. The results show that the municipalities are all working with flood management and integrating that aspect into many aspects of urban planning. It was also presented that the amount of collaborations between the municipalities varies depending on the amount of resources and political interest there is.