Renewables in Cities

The report gives an overview of the status, trends and developments of renewable energy in cities, using the most up-todate information and data available. The REC’s neutral, fact-based approach documents in detail the annual developments in policies, markets, investments and citizen action, with a particular focus on renewables in public, residential and commercial buildings as well as public and private urban transport. The REC complements REN21’s Renewables Global Status Report, which covers renewable energy market, industry and policy trends. Jointly, these reports contribute to making renewable energy visible in the global debate, drawing decision makers’ attention to renewables and continuously providing better data and tracking to inform energy decisions worldwide.

REC 2021 is the result of a collaborative effort, building on REN21’s unique data and reporting culture (p see Data Collection and Validation section), with more than 330 data contributors and peer reviewers and over 30 individual interviews from around the world.

City Practitioners Handbook: Circular Food Systems

This handbook provides local governments with concrete tools their peers are using to facilitate the transition to circular food systems, from stakeholder engagement to designing effective policies. It draws on experiences from the ICLEI network and its Circular Development pathway, learnings from the ICLEI-RUAF CITYFOOD Network and best practices from the Milan Pact Awards. This publication features experiences from 50 local governments and was designed by ICLEI experts in collaboration with champion cities for the benefit of city practitioners.

Creating sustainable cities through low-carbon freight

Freight transport demand is expected to triple and its associated emissions to more than double by 2050 compared to the 2015 levels, if left unchecked.To reverse this trend, cities and companies need to turn promises into actions.

The purpose of this report is to review existing urban freight movement characteristics across the nine project cities in Argentina, Colombia and India, provide an account of baseline GHG emissions (2019) from urban freight and identify possible interventions to minimize its negative impacts.  The emissions have been established using the EcoLogistics Self-monitoring Tool.

Drawing on the analysis, policy recommendations and interventions are also presented in this report and will be used as part of the Low Carbon Action Plan for Urban Freight (LCAP-UF) in the cities.

Her City

There is a lack of knowledge in participatory urban planning and design, particularly in involving vulnerable groups in urban development processes. Research has shown that participatory urban development with girls and young women, local actors, as well as multi-level decision-makers, creates opportunities for more inclusive, equal and sustainable urban development.

Thus, Her City provides an opportunity to build capacity on a larger scale. Her City provides municipal professionals, urban actors and local decision-makers with a solid toolbox for mainstreaming youth, gender and socioeconomic perspectives by strategically involving girls and young women in urban planning and design.

Her City’s ambition is to contribute to a range of the 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG3 on health and well-being, SDG5 on gender equality, SDG10 on reducing inequality, SDG11 on sustainable cities and communities, SDG16 on peace, justice and strong institutions and SDG17 on partnerships. However, previous experiences have shown that this approach also contributes to implementing other SDGs on the local level.

Municipal Response to COVID-19 for Sustainable Urban Development in Southeast Europe and Caucasus

The COVID-19 pandemic tested the robustness and resourcefulness of mostly all municipal services, from transportation and waste management to recreation and communication, pushing cities to reinvent new ways to serve their citizens. Besides, pandemic-centered protocols set new behavioral patterns – many of which were quite stressful for urban economies. Others, on the contrary, made both city leaders and citizens rethink the status-quo regarding sustainability and resilience. They created the opportunity for a green and circular economy to determine the mood of the recovery. Thus, a deep and better understanding of a city’s systems and operation is required in order to move towards sustainable development and greater resilience. If cities manage to learn from the COVID-19 crisis and proactively apply long-term prevention and risk reduction approaches, they will meet future emergencies better prepared or avoid some of them.

The following report summarizes the study on municipal response to COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted in September 2020, more than half a year after the global emergency was announced. It covers cities of Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine.

Kommunen befähigen, stärken und in den Mittelpunkt rücken!

Das Impulspapier empfiehlt:

1. Kommunen stärker befähigen durch strukturelle Weiterentwicklungen
Ein stärkerer Beitrag der Kommunen zu nachhaltiger Entwicklung erfordert strukturelle Weitentwicklungen. Das Gemeindefinanzsystem und der Rechtsrahmen kommunalen Handelns müssen zu diesem Zweck weiterentwickelt werden. Kommunen bedürfen finanzieller und rechtlicher Spielräume, um nachhaltigkeitsorientiert investieren zu können. Es gilt, Kommunen systematisch in die Deutsche Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie einzubinden…

Im Kontext der „Globale Dimension nachhaltiger Kommunalentwicklung“ gehöre auch „der Ausbau der europäischen und globalen Zusammenarbeit zu nachhaltiger Kommunalentwicklung. Die dazu bereits heute vorhandenen Netzwerke gilt es weiter zu unterstützen (z. B. C40, Connective Cities, Metropolis).“

[..]

2. Kommunen für die Umsetzung von Maßnahmen stärken
Neben diesen strukturellen Weiterentwicklungen gilt es, konkrete kommunale Nachhaltigkeitsaktivitäten zu stärken, etwa in Form von beispielgebenden und standardsetzenden Gemeinschaftsprojekten. Notwendig ist die Förderung eines „Berichtsrahmens Nachhaltige Kommunen“, um das kommunale Nachhaltigkeitsmonitoring zu unterstützen. Eine stärkere Ausrichtungder kommunalen Haushaltsführung an Nachhaltigkeitszielen erfordert die Weiterentwicklungvon Nachhaltigkeitshaushalten für investive und konsumtive Ausgaben…

[…]

3. Potenziale der Wissenschaft für nachhaltige Kommunalentwicklung nutzen
Es bestehen große Potenziale der Einbindung der Wissenschaft in kommunale Nachhaltigkeitsaktivitäten mittels einer Stärkung der Schnittstelle zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik/Verwaltung. Empfehlenswert ist es, Kommunen innerhalb der Nachhaltigkeits-Forschungsförderprogrammatik zu stärken, insbesondere in einer systemischen Perspektive…

[…]
 

Final Report: Virtual Global Exchange

The exchange was designed to bring together urban practitioners from all over the globe. The goal was to ignite creativity, innovation, solidarity and motivation, while creating and enhancing this global community of practice around the common purpose of combating the global COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences with smart local solutions and strategies.

During the first week, urban practitioners and experts from different municipalities, the civil society, business and academia, presented a total of 56 Good Practices in 18 sessions and gave insights into their experienced challenges and local solutions to deal with the pandemic. The exchange were centered around the nine topics were Public Health, Crisis Management, Economic Response, Housing, Education, Digitalisation, Crisis Communication, Innovation, and Green Urban Recovery.

The second week was about receiving practical “How To” capsules with practical exercises on topics that came up repeatedly during the exchange events such as: social media usage, digital tools, and how to plan for virtual meetings. Finally, the newly learned mindsets and tools could be applied in a 4-hour solution design workshop.

Towards the Just City in Kenya

In the next 25 years, Africa’s urban population is set to double. By 2040, the majority of Africans will be living in cities. There are numerous reasons for this: climate change, violent conflicts and the hope of finding work or education, although this list could easily be extended. Urbanisation thus constitutes one of the greatest transformations facing Africa in the 21st century.

Despite the diversity of the African continent, however, they are so far mostly “unjust” cities that people are moving to. The majority live in informal settlements and work under precarious conditions, mostly in the informal sector, without employment contracts and social security.

Towards the Just City in Kenya is the first publication of its kind that explores the conceptualisation and application of the “just city” concept in Kenya. The authors explore the concept from various dimensions, namely:

  • Conceptualisation of the just city in Kenya.
  • Locating the just city in the constitutional, policy, legislative and institutional context.
  • Discussion of spatial justice in the context of planning and housing; and
  • Interrogating practical ways in which cities express injustice and how these can be practically addressed, with examples from the public transport sector.

The study offers recommendations on how the just city concept can be realised in Kenya, looking specifically at urban institutions, citizens’ rights, housing policies and urban public transport systems.

With its just city project, FES Kenya and its partners facilitate dialogues through working groups which bring together civil society, trade unions, Members of County Assemblies, Government representatives, and academia working in urban centres of Kenya with the objective to jointly work for a just city.

Local Economic Development and Job Creation in MENA

Local Economic Development (LED) remains a top priority for the MENA countries as a driver for economic stability and job creation for a region with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. While many resources are invested in fostering local economic development in the MENA countries led by governments, however, there is often a lack of systematic access to practice-oriented solutions.

More than 40 local urban practitioners from 22 municipalities and 10 countries from the MENA region and Germany took part of the virtual dialogue event organized by the Connective Cities project. The dialogue event consisted of five virtual sessions held between the Sep 29th – Oct 7th 2019, focusing on facilitating the exchange of know-how and experiences through peer-to-peer learning among municipal representatives and urban practitioners. Moreover, the dialogue event aimed at enriching the analysis and planning capacity of the participating municipal representatives to address existing challenges of implementing LED and job creation programs.

Throughout the Dialogue event, participants showed tremendous commitment to the program with a level of excitement that remained high till the last day of the dialogue where they learned how to present their LED project concepts in less than 3 minutes; an activity that reflected their understanding of project development process as well as the peer-to-peer exchange methodology.

This report reflects in detail the main results of the virtual dialogue event.

Principles for Better Cities

We are now living through a period during which we are both struggling to find adequate ways to characterize the dominant urban challenges and to respond adequately to those challenges. It is indicative of this complexity that we live in a period that is simultaneously being criticized as ‘the Anthropocene’ and, more optimistically, called ‘the Urban Age’. This is the era in which humans have had a profound impact upon the earth’s ecological systems. It is also the period during which the planet has become overwhelmingly urbanized. Likewise, social relations are ever more global, and thus, at one level, diffuse. To address local challenges, global targets have been set up to inspire and guide common efforts in sustainable development.

Arguably, responding well to the current challenges is best achieved by a set of integrated principles that firstly link highlevel aspirations to on-the-ground practical guidelines. Secondly, it is best realized through recognizing global and generalizing patterns while being sensitive to local particularities and priorities. Thirdly, it requires simple and aspirational principles at the top level but, at the same time, a grounding in more complex detail as the process goes deeper.

Principles for Better Cities is a collective response to that set of tensions. The document attempts to meet those contradictory needs by outlining a set of layered principles (Part I) while providing a method for translating between other existing charters, frameworks and sets of principles such as the Sustainable Development Goals (Part II).