Helping cities integrate climate action into urban planning
Many cities have climate action plans with ambitious targets, but turning those plans into reality requires integrating climate considerations into urban planning: master plans, zoning regulations, and planning policies that shape how cities grow.
The Jameel C40 Urban Planning Climate Labs provide hands-on support to help cities embed climate data directly into city planning processes. Established by C40 and Community Jameel, the programme pilots this approach in Chennai, India, and Amman, Jordan, developing practical methods that other cities can adapt.
What the Jameel C40 Urban Planning Climate Labs do
The Climate Labs are working directly with planning teams to embed climate considerations into day-to-day decision-making. This includes:
Integrating climate action into strategic plans
Supporting cities to align their master plans, strategic spatial plans, and land-use policies with climate targets, emissions pathways, and climate risk assessments.
Embedding climate data in planning regulations
Helping cities translate climate action plans into zoning codes, development controls, design standards, and spatial policies.
Working with planning teams across departments
Convening planning, environment, transport, housing, resilience, and other teams to ensure climate priorities are shared and embedded across municipal functions.
Providing practical implementation guidance
Offering tools and examples that show how cities around the world are tackling heat, flooding, sprawl, land use, informality, density, transit-oriented development, and nature-based solutions through planning.
Watch: Building climate resilience into Chennai’s master plan
Discover how the Jameel C40 Urban Planning Climate Lab is supporting the city of Chennai to embed climate resilience and sustainability directly into its new master plan. This plan will guide the city’s future growth away from high-carbon, vulnerable development and towards a green, community-focused strategy.
Climate Action Guide for Urban Planners
New resource
This new guide from the Jameel C40 Urban Planning Climate Labs will support urban planners from cities around the world to play their full part in tackling the climate crisis.
It is available in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese (BR) and Spanish.
Partners
Community Jameel advances science and learning for communities to thrive. An independent, global organisation, Community Jameel launched in 2003 to continue the tradition of philanthropy and community service established by the Jameel family of Saudi Arabia in 1945. Community Jameel supports scientists, humanitarians, technologists and creatives to understand and address pressing human challenges. The work enabled and supported by Community Jameel has led to significant breakthroughs, including the Jameel Clinic‘s discovery of the new antibiotics halicin and abaucin, critical modelling of the spread of COVID-19 by the Jameel Institute at Imperial College London, and a Nobel Prize-winning experimental approach to alleviating global poverty championed by the co-founders of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
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