Activity across 112 Mission Cities is yielding new insights and data, supporting not only their own goals, but advancing the journey to climate neutrality for others to follow. Rohit Mondal and Sabrina Bresciani from Politecnico di Milano, NetZeroCities’ academic partners in Milan, write here about two scientific publications from the university that have analysed this information and how it can support cities to add important non-technical solutions to their climate toolkit.
All cities face the urgent need to reach climate neutrality and are gearing up to measure and learn from their climate actions by assessing their effectiveness on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). But these solutions, while a big part of the story, can only go so far. For any climate action to be sustainable, it will have to be focused on people.
So, what are the other less technical means available for cities, and what tools do they have to monitor their effectiveness?
Based on case studies and data from the Pilot Cities Programme, two scientific publications from authors of the Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano (Polimi) focus on these non-GHG indicators, which includes social innovation indicators, behavioural change, governance and co-benefits.
Politecnico di Milano, a leading Italian public university for science and technology, trains engineers, architects, and designers with a strong emphasis on sustainable development and is supporting Mission Cities with learning and capacity building as part of the Mission Platform managed by NetZeroCities.
Both the publications contribute to the scientific literature on designing climate transitions and can be used as pragmatic levers for public administrators to monitor and evaluate social innovation action plans and encourage their development to support sustainability goals. They will also be relevant to academics in the field, as well as policymakers and consultants.
The first publication, an open-access book titled “Assessment Framework for People-Centred Solutions to Carbon Neutrality. A Comprehensive List of Case Studies and Social Innovation Indicators at Urban Level” by Sabrina Bresciani, Francesca Rizzo and Francesco Mureddu, presents an extensive list of over 1000 indicators to measure and evaluate the social innovation of action plans to support people-centred, collaborative or co-designed solutions to lower carbon emissions in cities.
The book describes 10 pragmatic and measurable categories of social innovation action that cities can take, which include related indicators and evaluation criteria. Thirty-six case studies of social innovation for climate neutrality are also summarised to provide evidence of how cities are utilising people-focused solutions as important levers for systemic climate transitions.
© Pixabay, Chris Muchard
The second study, also open-access and titled “What Cities Want to Measure: Bottom-Up Selection of Indicators for Systemic Change toward Climate Neutrality Aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 40 European Cities”, is published in the scientific journal Climate. The authors, Rohit Mondal, Sabrina Bresciani, and Francesca Rizzo, provide an analysis of the selection of indicators utilised by 40 cities that are part of the first cohort of the Pilot Cities Programme.
This shows that cities are taking the initiative to report not only GHG emissions indicators but also non-technical indicators (either provided by NetZeroCities or ones proposed themselves) like governance, citizen engagement, and social innovation. The indicators selected by cities have been classified according to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a common reporting framework for cities as well as organisations. The most recurrent SDGs proposed by cities, are SDG13 “Climate Action” (43% of all indicators proposed), and SDG 16 “Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions” (accounting for 24.5% of all indicators proposed).
Ultimately, cities find it relevant to measure not only GHG emissions but also a variety of non-technical results, supporting their communications to citizens on the progress and benefits of the climate neutrality journey. The research is part of NetZeroCities’ scientific research on the systemic approach of the Mission Cities – of which social innovation is an important lever. Further information on NetZeroCities’ ‘scientific research results and events can be found at this dedicated page.
See the visualisation of social innovation pathways:
