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CityChanger Alicia Johnson: A Guide to Urban Disaster Preparedness

A city that prepares for the worse is disrupted the least. We explore what disaster preparedness looks like and how municipalities should be planning. The 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay area...

Promoting Heat Pumps: A Communication Strategy for Hard-to-Engage Groups

Conservatives fiercely resist behaviour change, but a six-point communications strategy designed to advance buy-in of heat pumps is a working model for engaging hard-to-convince groups. When Anja Floetenmeyer-Woltmann steps onto the stage, she is determined...

How to Pedestrianise a Street: Seven ‘Steps’ to Walkable Heaven

Do you want to know how to reduce the dominance of cars on your streets and make them better places for pedestrians? This how-to guide sets out seven easy ways that you can make...

How to Innovate Retrofitting

With so many properties failing to meet contemporary energy efficiency standards, much needs to be done to save occupants from needless discomfort and expense. There are plenty of mainstream retrofit concepts, but what about...

Renovating Makes Cents: How to Retrofit on a Budget

Realistically, for a shot at halting climate change, we need to make buildings more efficient, big time, with widespread retrofit rollouts in the next few years! Regardless of good intentions, that’s not easy without...

How to Make Water Use More Efficient

Showering, cleaning, drinking, flushing, and washing clothes all use water. A lot of water! As the climate changes and populations increase, supply is struggling to keep up with demand. Making our city’s buildings more...

Bring Greenery Indoors: How to Green Your Home

There’s more to indoor plants than just succulents. With the following simple ways, you can enrichen your plain rooms with a little bit of nature. Whether a simple plant in a pot, or a...

How to Create a Pop-Up Car-Free Zone in Your City

Once every year a ‘World Car Free Day’ takes place in various big cities around the world. If your city does not yet host a car-free event, keep reading this guide on how to...

Cooking Up Community: Transforming a Town Square into an Open Air Kitchen

This article is part of a paid collaboration between Urban Future and Pop Up City Amsterdam, implemented in the run-up to UF24 in Rotterdam. The featured "recipe", the Open Air Kitchen, is one of...

CityChanger Hanah Lahe: Healing Political Divides to Unite Citizens in Climate Action

In ageing societies like Europe, young people have little of the political power needed to influence decisions that impact their lives. As a group for whom sustainability is a prominent concern, futureproofing cities relies...

Coolfood Quick Guide: Strategies to Entice Better Food Choices

Food service organisations are well placed to make a big dent in greenhouse gas emissions just by reducing how much meat they serve. The World Resource Institute’s Coolfood Quick Guide shows them how. And...

“Truck or Trike?” – How a Vancouver Co-Op Challenges the Status Quo of Last Mile Delivery

In the highly competitive logistics business environment, Shift Delivery is taking delivery trucks off, and cargo trikes onto Vancouver’s streets. All by putting community over profit. Here’s what it means to deliver goods the...

Cutting Back on Construction Traffic: How to Get Started

Construction traffic is costly, dangerous and awfully polluting. A promising tool to radically reduce traffic are construction consolidation centres (CCC) or urban logistics hubs. At CCCs, construction materials are stored, traffic in and out...

How Two Bold Decisions Helped Stockholm Save Emissions and Money

Construction consolidation centres are tools for city administrations to reach emission targets through cutting back on the most polluting traffic: heavy goods vehicles. Stockholm’s Fredrik Bergman implemented Sweden’s largest CCC, the Bygglogistikcenter, which serves...

The Missing Link: How to Make Intersections Bike-Friendly

Safe intersections are critical to any cycling city, yet are often the last link to be thought about. Here is a beginner’s overview to bike-friendly intersections, based on advice from three experts in the...

How to Achieve a Walking and Cycling Transformation in Your City

This article was written by and for the C40 Knowledge Hub, which delivers cutting-edge insights and practical resources from leading climate cities for others working in city government. It was originally published here in March 2019....

Rush to Hush Hour: How to Get People Cycling to Work

From helmet hair to soaked suits, cycling to work isn’t always appealing. Here’s why paying commuters to cycle to work is misguided and how employers, employees and policymakers can all play their part. Making Cents...

How to Cut Back on Construction Traffic: The Challenge

European construction activities are predicted to grow by 3% per year. Housing, office and retail space need to be built and refurbished, roads must be repaired, resealed or dug up to renew pipes, or...