Climate Positive Development and Reinventing Cities: Delivering the new urban agenda district by district

The impact of climate change is one of the biggest issue facing humanity today. C40 Cities' Deadline 2020 research shows that actions taken within cities are going to be key to successfully delivering on the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to an average of 1.5 degrees, however our modelling shows that we only have a small window of time in which to act. The land use and development decisions we make over the next few years will affect the carbon emissions of tomorrow.

Unprecedented Population Growth

Today, more than half the world's population lives in cities, and that figure is increasing.

With rapid urbanization, many cities have begun smartly unlocking underutilised existing infill and brownfield sites for development and regeneration, in order to accommodate unprecedented levels of urban population growth. These neighbourhood-scale projects offer an ideal opportunity to implement new models of development that can simultaneously delivering a raft of social, economic and environmental co-benefits including clean air, walkable streets and economic returns.

Cities and the private sector have more ability to innovate and deliver transformative impacts at the neighborhood scale, with many technical solutions being especially effective when aggregated, rather than applied to individual buildings.

The dual challenge of rapid urbanization and climate change is why C40 created the Climate Positive Development Programme and the Reinventing Cities competition.

What is Climate Positive?

The Climate Positive Development Programme is a recognition based framework that seeks to give tools in order to deliver a model of how cities can grow in environmentally sustainable ways. At the core of the Programme is the Climate Positive Framework that provides guidance to projects as they develop their strategy. In order to achieve a Climate Positive outcome, projects must reduce their onsite operational emissions across the three highest impact areas for carbon emissions - stationary energy, transport and waste. Because these are parts of a community, development teams must extend the benefits by taking action that leads to a reduction of emissions in the surrounding community (which are quantifiable reductions, and referred to as 'Climate Positive Credits').

What is Reinventing Cities

The Reinventing Cities competition stimulates the most innovative carbon-neutral developments across the globe by transforming underutilized sites into beacons of sustainability and resiliency. Reinventing Cities is a great opportunity for cities, urban development stakeholders, and citizens to benefit from an international contest designed to accelerate decarbonised, resilient and sustainable urban environments around the world. Each Reinventing Cities project will further serve as a model for carbon-neutral development, demonstrating innovative and replicable climate solutions.