Creating City Portraits

As home to more than 4 billion people – over 55% of the world’s population – cities account for over 60% of global energy use and more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions due to the global footprint of the products they import and consume. At the same time, there are vast inequalities in city residents’ experience of urban life, ranging from health, housing, and political representation to access to essential services, employment, and wider opportunities.

The growing impact of 21st-century crises – from climate breakdown, global health pandemics, and economic crises – is placing severe, recurring stress on many of the world’s cities. As they seek to manage and emerge from these interconnected crises, cities have a critical opportunity to lead in making the transformations needed to create societies and economies that are far more socially just and ecologically safe. In other words, cities can aim to thrive by building wellbeing and resilience, not only in their own city but in the wider world.

The C40 works with over 90 of the world’s largest cities to drive meaningful and measurable action on climate change, on the scale required to limit global heating to within 1.5 degrees Celsius. C40 Cities are taking an integrated and inclusive approach to reducing emissions and adapting to climate risk, aiming to maximize and distribute social, environmental, and economic benefits equitably.

The Thriving Cities Initiative (TCI) is a collaboration between the C40, Doughnut Economics Action Lab, and Circle Economy, funded by the KR Foundation. TCI aims to work with some of the C40’s most pioneering cities to explore and pursue ambitious actions to meet the goal of living well, within the means of the living planet, and in the process, to reduce their consumption-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The TCI’s ‘City Portrait’ is a transformative tool for cities to explore and embrace the vision of a thriving city – a vision that recognizes what makes a place unique while also recognizing its global influence and responsibility. The methodology for creating the City Portrait arises out of a conceptual collaboration between Kate Raworth of Doughnut Economics Action Lab and Janine Benyus of Biomimicry 3.8 and is described in detail in this document.

Through the TCI’s pilot program, the methodology was developed and applied in the cities of Philadelphia, Portland, and Amsterdam in 2019. This guide presents the steps taken to apply this first version of the City Portrait methodology in these three cities, and is illustrated with examples from Amsterdam’s City Portrait, along with some ways in which the resulting portrait can be turned into a transformative tool. By publishing this guide, we are making the methodology available to be applied and adapted in other cities and places.

Together with diverse city representatives, we have embarked upon a journey to understand how to create cities that are home to thriving people in a thriving place, while respecting the wellbeing of all people and the health of the whole planet. We believe this place-based methodology has the potential to be adapted beyond its first application to global North cities, in order to make it relevant and useful for cities in the global South, and also for neighborhoods, towns, nations, and regions. We invite you to join us as we co-create approaches to meet this urgent 21st-century challenge.

Sources:

https://doughnuteconomics.org/Creating-City-Portraits-Methodology.pdf