Projects-about

About the project

NIUA and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are jointly implementing a GEF 7-funded project titled UrbanShift (Livable Cities in India: Demonstrating Sustainable Urban Planning and Development through Integrated Approaches). The project aims to transform Indian cities through integrated urban planning which would lead to reducing GHG emissions, air pollution and congestion, protecting and conserving ecologically sensitive areas by building capacity of state and city authorities. The objective of project is to demonstrate low emissions, resilient, nature-based inclusive sustainable urban development in selected cities and support scale-up nationally. The project would provide technical assistance and investment for undertaking the following activities in the target and replication cities: • Evidence-based sustainable and integrated planning • Investments in low emissions, resilient, nature-based solutions and mobility • Innovative financing solutions for cities • Knowledge management and capacity development: Knowledge products, good practices and tools would be made available to national, state and city authorities as well as other stakeholders through the National Urban Learning Platform (NULP). To maximise impact, the NULP will draw on the materials of the UrbanShift global project, providing the stakeholders with opportunities to learn from experiences both nationally and internationally. The project will also focus on enabling gender mainstreaming practices and processes through inclusion of gender expertise, stakeholder consultations with women, adoption of gender responsive planning and budgeting processes and mandatory gender assessment of all urban development projects.

Status: On-going

Funded by: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Location: Pune, Surat, Puducherry, Agra

Partners: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),

Contact:

Highlights

System and Transformational Impact: The project aims to support more integrated sustainable cities where knowledge exchange and capacity development informs the implementation of innovative, inclusive, gender-sensitive, sustainable, and integrated projects, that can be replicated in other cities. Innovations and Piloting of New Approaches: The project would enable transformational shifts from, ● sectoral planning to integrated, evidence-based sustainable spatial planning; ● environmental degradation to a development approach that values natural assets and biodiversity, promotes nature-based solutions; ● urban sprawl to compact, low-emission, resilient and resource-efficient urban environment; ● traditional finance to mobilizing finance from public, private and innovative sources; and ● ad-hoc efforts to adapting lessons from evidence-based best practices. Innovations in Financing Leveraging: The project would adopt innovative financial solutions that mainstream sustainability and support city authorities to mobilize finance from public, private and innovative sources. The target cities would adopt innovative financing solutions and business models facilitating engagement of private sector in green nature-based urban investments, development of low emissions Non-Motorised Transport infrastructure, land value capture for financing low emission resilient green transit corridors, creating enabling environment for Public-private partnership (PPP) projects, etc.

Publications