Transforming Cities with the Neighbourhood Approach: Bottom-up Solutions for Sustainability and Equity

UNEP and C40 are developing a common Neighbourhood Approach to promote a people-centred, integrated and sustainable vision of urban development and regeneration. The Neighbourhood Approach is a pathway for cities to initiate transformation, promote inclusiveness, and ensure equal access to urban resources and opportunities. Neighbourhoods can pursue integrated urban planning at a less complex scale than cities – this approach encourages designers, citizens and local authorities to collaboratively create green and thriving communities.

Neighbourhoods are key to implementing holistic, bottom-up and innovative solutions that consider communities’ needs, including the most marginalised and vulnerable ones. Transforming urban systems for the purposes of a green and thriving neighbourhood not only support the delivery of carbon-neutrality and resource-efficiency, but it also is attributed to tackling inequalities, poverty and vulnerability by ensuring inclusiveness in the decision-making process, food security, improved public health, increased (green) density, affordability and resilience, and a better quality of life. 

This session will provide a space for high-level exchanges between local level practitioners and decision-makers to discuss creating green and thriving neighbourhoods by focusing on equitable, inclusive, and resilient community systems in cities. It will also demonstrate how, with top-down support from cities, sustainable bottom-up change is possible