Ambition is the Fuel of Sustainable Change

In the journey toward more sustainable cities and destinations:

"It's better to be too ambitious and fail, than to succeed in low ambition."
- Katarina Thorstensson, Sustainability Strategist in Gothenburg

This is not a call for recklessness. It's a call to act in proportion to the challenges we face—to set goals and aim for real impact that stretch us, even if we don't always reach them on the first try. It's okay to fail, it's okay to try, but never compromise on the level of ambition. And look for what's already out there, or what leading destinations are doing.

Certifications, rankings, and indexes can provide essential structure. They offer motivation, focus attention, and create common ground among stakeholders. But their greatest value is in helping us ask the right questions—not in providing all the answers.

And while the administrative work involved is often seen as a burden, Jukka Punamäki, Senior Advisor in tourism from Business Helsinki, emphasises that these frameworks can actually save time in the long run. Rather than building everything from scratch, destinations gain access to ready-made structures that guide strategy and support shared learning.

"In the end, saving the planet is hard work and it requires some—usually universal—actions,"
- Jukka Punamäki, Senior Advisor in tourism from Business Helsinki

But sustainability in cities doesn't end with these tools. The work of sustainability is long-term, complex, and often uncomfortable. But it's also deeply necessary—and the more ambitious we are, the more we stand to learn, adapt, and evolve.

That's why two of Europe's leading destinations—Helsinki and Gothenburg—have used sustainability schemes and indexes as instruments, not as end goals. Today they are also looking beyond these tools to adopt a more holistic approach centred on improving residents' quality of life…. Ambitious and very necessary to safeguard the future of tourism, to preserve the license of tourism to operate in places.

Place Generation captured their reflections in a whitepaper: The Score is Not the Story, produced by CityDNA in partnership with Simpleview/Granicus to share with other cities.