C40 Cities and the Ramboll Foundation, together with experts from Ramboll, aim to accelerate urban resilience and put community wellbeing at the heart of city development.
LONDON, UK, JUNE 26, 2025 – With rapid urbanisation set to continue through the 21st century, cities will remain the cause of, and solution to, a number of global crises. There is an urgent need for sustainable urban planning and design to combat climate change impacts, biodiversity loss, and stretched social systems.
The Ramboll Foundation, owner of the global architecture, engineering, and consultancy company Ramboll, and C40 Cities, are pleased to announce a new strategic partnership to help shape resilient cities where communities and nature thrive. The partnership will support efforts to develop and embed resilience and climate adaptation measures into long-term planning, governance, and policy frameworks.
“With a grant of USD 500,000 in 2025 and an intention to provide annual grants, we are proud to support C40 Cities, an organisation that challenges how we live, move, and connect, and champions a future where cities are designed for people and planet. In an era of mounting climate and social pressures, our partnership helps bring together vision, expertise, and resources to shape resilient cities where people and nature can prosper for generations to come,” says Søren Staugaard Nielsen, Managing Director, Ramboll Foundation.
Positioning the Ramboll Foundation among C40 Cities’ core funders, the funding will strengthen C40 Cities’ capacity to respond to opportunities and challenges in key areas of urban resilience. The Foundation will join the C40 Strategic Advisory Board, while Ramboll will provide research, advocacy, and technical support.
“We are delighted to establish a partnership with the Ramboll Foundation, building on our long-standing relationship with the Ramboll Group. Unrestricted funding of this nature is transformative in our efforts to build thriving cities fit for the future, providing us with the necessary flexibility to adapt and innovate, says Mark Watts, Executive Director, C40 Cities. “The Ramboll Foundation’s support will play a pivotal role in driving the innovation central to C40’s new business plan through 2030.”
Building on long collaboration for lasting impact
The new strategic partnership builds on several years of collaboration between Ramboll and C40 Cities. Most recently, the two developed the Social Wellbeing Toolkit that helps city officials, planners, and other key urban stakeholders embed wellbeing outcomes into every stage of neighbourhood-scale projects, from early planning to implementation and evaluation.
Notable past initiatives include the renewal and expansion of the Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods program, which leveraged Ramboll’s technical expertise to incorporate social wellbeing into 15-minute city strategies in pilot cities.
Additionally, the Ramboll Foundation provided a grant in 2018 to develop an adaptation monitoring framework and sponsored the World Mayors’ Summit in Copenhagen in 2019. These projects exemplify the Foundation’s long-term commitment to sustainable urban development shared by both organisations. Peter Heymann Andersen, COO of Ramboll, says: “At a time of deep uncertainty where climate change, social inequality, and biodiversity loss are reshaping the world around us, the Ramboll Foundation’s strategic partnership with C40 Cities marks a meaningful step towards accelerating climate adaptation and urban resilience. By uniting our expertise with global climate leadership, we strive to empower cities to anticipate, adapt, and thrive amid disruption.”