Planning the Ecological Transition through Multilevel Governance: Insights from Barcelona

The ecological transition requires systemic transformations across institutional, political, and spatial dimensions. Multilevel governance is essential for maintaining coherence between strategic visions and regulatory frameworks at different scales. This study examines how Barcelona operationalises the ecological transition through spatial planning instruments at the regional, metropolitan, municipal, and neighbourhood levels. It employs qualitative analysis of official plans, strategies, and legal frameworks to map their objectives and connections to the ecological transition, showing that the transition emerges not from a single instrument but from the interaction of multiple plans, whose effectiveness depends on coordination and institutional alignment. While multilevel governance enables integration, it also introduces risks of fragmentation. The Barcelona case underlines the mediating role of metropolitan institutions and offers insights applicable to other metropolitan cities.