Cities and Integrated Planning
Most cities face the growing challenge of having to effectively govern, plan, develop infrastructure and support their rapidly growing population, while dealing with the impacts of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Integrated planning is a powerful tool to ensure environmentally sensitive and just urban development. Sustainable and integrated urban design is a holistic approach that creates synergies by combining various aspects of city design and management, such as place-making, transportation, housing, health and biodiversity.
This approach is an opportunity to move towards low-carbon and human-scale models of urban development and address jointly challenges of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, while contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
UNEP is developing a holistic and practical approach to better integrate environmental concerns in strategic planning at city level. The approach draws from experiences of cities in different continents as well as inputs from international organizations and reputable research institutions. It is designed to help cities, particularly those in developing countries, to set up a more sustainable city infrastructure through better long-term planning.
Green and Thriving Neighborhoods
Good neighborhoods are the cornerstone of sustainable cities and the fundamental scale of people-centered and sustainable urbanism. A good neighbourhood is a place where people can easily meet their daily needs while feeling safe; where people find high-quality urban landscapes and green spaces, shopping and recreation, economic opportunities, good schools and childcare facilities, as well as well-connected and accessible transport networks.
The neighbourhood scale is an ideal entry point for cities to start implementing integrated urban planning and management. Neighbourhoods are big enough to aggregate the interrelated components of urban life and test innovative approaches, yet small enough to reduce some of the complexities and costs of system integration and to see results in a shorter time period.
UNEP has supported the development of the Integrated Guidelines for Sustainable Neighbourhood Design to help cities create sustainable neighbourhoods and supported pilot implementation in several cities, including Bacolod (Philippines), Bogor (Indonesia), Renca (Chile), Lalitpur (Nepal), and 7 new towns and settlements in Morocco.
UNEP, in partnership with UN-Habitat and C40 Cities, has developed a free "Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods" online training course in six languages under the umbrella of UrbanShift. By following the training course, you will be able to explore how to develop green and thriving neighbourhoods in your city with an integrated vision, a set of design strategies, and a step-by-step delivery roadmap. This course will inspire you to think differently about neighbourhoods and provide the necessary tools to take action.
Climate Adaptation Planning
UNEP is helping cities build climate change resilience through the restoration of urban ecosystems, encouraging governments to develop city adaptation plans, investing in urban flood defence technologies, introducing loans schemes to help communities ‘hurricane-proof’ their homes, and producing practical guidance and expertise through publications such as the Practical Guide to Climate resilient Buildings & Communities or the Beating The Heat: A Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities. One UNEP project in Lao PDR is aiming to reduce flooding for 700,000 people – roughly 10% of the entire population, while another is using nature-based solutions and rainwater harvesting systems in Latin American and Caribbean cities to benefit 115,000 people.
UNEP leads global initiatives and programmes that aim to reduce climate impacts in urban environments, such as the Global Alliance for Buildings & Construction (Global ABC), the UrbanShift initiative, or the Cool Coalition, which recently established an urban cooling programme to help cities take action on extreme heat and the rising demand for cooling. The programme will provide technical assistance to 100 urban areas.
UNEP is also supporting countries to develop their National Adaptation Plans (NAP), which are designed and implemented at sub-national and local levels in both rural and urban contexts. The NAP process seeks to identify medium- and long-term climate change adaptation needs, informed by the latest climate science. Once major vulnerabilities and risks to climate change have been identified, the NAP process develops priority adaptation strategies and programmes to address them, including at urban level.
For instance, the municipality and capital city of Lilongwe, Malawi, will develop flood-zoning guidance to address medium- and long-term climate change impacts. In other countries such as Costa Rica and Sao Tome and Principe, the NAP is prioritising the development of local adaptation plans at the district level.
Learn more about UNEP’s work on adaptation planning.
