From metrics to meaning: Enabling iterative design for multi- stakeholder engagement and behavioural change in systemic climate transitions with quali-quantitative assessment and sensemaking

Cities pursuing systemic approaches to climate neutrality increasingly leverage bottom-up strategies to foster multi-stakeholder engagement, enabling societal and behavioural transformations. However, assessing their impact through conventional quantitative indicators alone fails to capture the complexity of change. Design for systemic climate transitions enables cities to build pluralistic understandings of impact through mutual and reflexive learning that cultivates collective intelligence and shared insights. In this study, we analyse the quantitative indicators, qualitative data and collective sensemaking from 53 European cities participating in the EU Mission Cities: findings show that collective sensemaking has become a key enabler of reflexive learning, allowing cities to surface tacit and cross-contextual knowledge. This study advances the understanding of multi-dimensional evaluations in systemic design and illustrates how cities leverage collective sensemaking to iteratively assess and improve interventions on multi-stakeholder engagement and citizens’ behavioural change within climate transitions.