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Publisher Copyright: © 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The city of Lahti, Finland, has developed a unique policy of combining city strategy work with strategic master planning in an iterative process. It thereby offers insights to research on strategic spatial planning, exemplifying how institutional frameworks of statutory planning can be utilized as resources in strategic planning. Three lessons from the Lahti case are drawn: (1) utilize the moments of opportunity in the institutional environment of statutory planning, (2) shift the focus from the level of 'strategic plans' to the policy level of strategy work, (3) develop strategic planning as a platform for diverse 'languages'.

Alternative, carbon-free energy sources are essential to regulate the global climate crisis. Geothermal energy – i.e., heat harvested by geothermal systems by drilling geothermal wells to circulate water in a fractured hot rock mass at the depth of 1-7 km – has a huge potential as an environmentally friendly carbon-free energy source. One of the drawbacks is that geothermal systems can induce small-magnitude earthquakes that pose seismic risk to critical sensitive infrastructure. SEISMIC RISK - Mitigation of induced seismic risk in urban environments -project focuses on how to evaluate, mitigate and communicate seismic hazard and risk in an urban environment. Some of the associated challenges are the unclear regulatory, administrative and policy processes and unclear roles of the different actors. Another problem concerns defining what constitutes relevant information and how it should be disseminated to the public.One part of the project is to carry out interviews of stakeholders (energy companies, municipalities and state authorities) on, how they perceive the current situation. These will give information on 1) the extent to which different actors have a common understanding of the situation and potential risks, 2) who should be responsible for coordinating risk management, and 3) how citizens should be informed of potential risks and should they be able to participate in location decisions of such geothermal power plants. Another part of the project is focusing on, how social media can better be used for rapid communication of induced seismic events and for the gathering of observations. Currently social media (Twitter) is already used for rapid notification of seismic events to the public. Gathering of macroseismic observations is handled online.

International audience; The term 'actionable knowledge' indicates the rising expectation that science should produce useful results for policy and planning. In line with this, the success of the notion of ecosystem services (ES) in ecological sciences has been associated with promises of enhanced environmental protection and a narrowed gap between ecological knowledge and action. Promising to deliver operational knowledge for land-use planning, the notion allows ecologists to address social and economic issues related to conservation. We show that actionability of ES in land-use planning is not given, but requires active engagement by ecologists, land-use planners and nature managers. Making ES knowledge useful can be achieved through a range of techniques facilitating collaborative action between the producers and users of ES knowledge. We draw on exploratory case analyses in France and Finland to show how ES maps and scenarios are mobilised to operationalise ES. More specifically, we identify four techniques associated with mapping and scenario-making that seek to render ES knowledge actionable: (1) measures of ES in specific units, (2) visualisation of the results, (3) storytelling to discuss future options and (4) gamification to enact a culture of cooperation. We underline that these techniques can be used in several different ways in the planning process, providing specific advantages and limits depending on the goals, and that they have a diverging place in professional cultures.

Tackling biodiversity loss requires new forms of expertise in forestry. Drawing on a case study in Finland, the paper analyses how professional foresters are invited to protect the heterogeneity of forest ecosystems while they simultaneously work to homogenise these habitats for improved productivity. To understand how formerly irrelevant biological knowledge, and related skills and expertise gain credibility in forestry decision-making in such a complex policy context, the paper adopts a two-fold theoretical approach. On one hand, it focuses on the tools and techniques which redirect expert practice, introducing new rationalities, roles and routines for professional foresters. On the other hand, it seeks to view foresters as complex sociological actors who reinvent themselves as biodiversity experts by strategically mobilising various kinds of resources to negotiate their role and status as experts. This two-fold analysis addresses how the status of biological knowledge is determined by the tension between formally configured expert rationalities and expert identities and roles mobilised through informal interactions. Three expert strategies in engaging with biodiversity are identified based on the personal histories, motivations and identities of the foresters: the ambassador, navigator and bolshie. Through these strategies professional foresters interact with each other and with landowners while implementing biodiversity policies, hence influencing the policy outcomes.

Protecting biodiversity requires the practice of making nature values present in natural resource use decisions. In this article, such practices are explored from the perspective of affective capacities for expert fieldwork in forestry. Affective capacities are broadly acknowledged in the literature on embodied knowing, and by the practitioners themselves, as a necessary condition for knowing nature. We will extend this discussion to the politics involved. Drawing on a case study in Finland, the article points out that professional foresters’ affective ways of knowing nature are controlled by institutionalised strategies and practices. Thus, power is exercised through fieldwork, determining how nature can and should be known in forestry. The article concludes that since policy implementation takes place through the intensities present in mundane routines, governance studies would benefit from understanding how the various technologies of governance interact with emergent and embodied capacities.