Shira de Bourbon Parme, Christine Lunde Rasmussen

June 30, 2025

Rethinking cities from the ground up, with social wellbeing at the forefront

The urban agenda is complicated by climate disruption, growing inequality, and rapid urbanisation. How do we better embed social wellbeing in the design of urban neighbourhoods? C40 cities and Ramboll explore new avenues with a strategic partnership.

Path by the water
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In the face of rising social, environmental and economic risks, Cities are increasingly needing to find new pathways to resilience that place people and nature at their core. A new partnership between C40 Cities and the Ramboll Foundation, together with experts from Ramboll, aims to deliver just that. The partnership offers practical tools helping city leaders, municipalities, developers, and investors to design neighbourhoods where communities are protected from and thrive through disruption.

From buzzword to blueprint

Resilience is sometimes overused and may come across as a buzzword. However, Ramboll has experience delivering actionable approaches to resilience that are systemic and inclusive, where resilient societies constitute multiple and integrated capacities that reduce social and material vulnerabilities, continuously delivering critical services and protecting the wellbeing of all communities during extreme climate events.

A key dimension of resilience is the focus on people, setting social wellbeing at the heart of systems, delivering on life quality, and community cohesion with and for everyone. An important contribution to unfold this agenda is the Social Wellbeing Toolkit for social wellbeing developed by C40 Cities and Ramboll. The Toolkit supports cities to reinforce their communities by embedding and enabling social wellbeing in urban planning and offering practical resources that put social outcomes at the heart of climate-smart urban development.

Developed through real-world pilot projects in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Warsaw, Poland, the toolkit offers a hands-on, step-by-step guide for embedding wellbeing into neighbourhood-scale planning. It helps city officials, planners, and project leaders move from abstract ambition to measurable impact, ensuring that climate action also drives equity, inclusion, and improved quality of life.

“The toolkit offers a clear, integrated framework that places social wellbeing at the heart of urban projects, empowering cities to create more inclusive and sustainable spaces that benefit both people and the planet,” says Helene Chartier, Director of Urban Planning and Design at C40 Cities.

What is the Social Wellbeing Toolkit?

Developed by C40 Cities and Ramboll, with support from the Ramboll Foundation, this free toolkit helps city officials, planners, and stakeholders embed social wellbeing into every stage of neighbourhood development.

It includes:

  • A guidance document with key principles and a people-first approach.
  • A workbook with templates and a six-step process to define a project-specific Theory of Change.
  • Real-world lessons from pilot projects in Copenhagen and Warsaw.
Resilience starts in your neighbourhood

Through initiatives like C40’s Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods programme (link to programme - Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods - C40 Cities ), a new model of urban transformation is emerging that sees neighbourhoods as dynamic systems and prioritises their capacity to adapt, recover, and transform. From 15-minute cities to complete neighbourhoods, these models prioritise human and planetary health, shifting climate action beyond carbon emissions and energy use, towards accessibility and inclusion, social infrastructure and networks, and quality of life in local urban communities.

“The sustainable transition of our cities has the potential to improve health, equity, and social cohesion,” says Christine Lunde Rasmussen, Global Head of Society Impact & Policy at Ramboll. “But this will only happen if cities are equipped with practical tools and shared frameworks that embed wellbeing into every step of the process – and which allows them work outcome driven, tracking progress through data and facilitating a strategic dialogue across city decision makers, investors and citizens.”

Grounded in the Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods approach, the Social Wellbeing Toolkit meets this need, helping cities and urban practitioners co-create context-specific definitions of wellbeing, embed wellbeing outcomes into project design, and track their progress over time. In doing so, it supports a more just and inclusive transition, where neighbourhoods become not only more resilient, but also more equitable and empowering for the people who live there

Building trust, building capacity

Resilient societies require distributed forms of governance and collaborative processes for co-creation that include local voices, shared responsibilities and cross-sector integration. That is why so many of today’s most forward-looking urban initiatives prioritise inclusive processes as much as technical solutions, while ensuring that those who are most vulnerable in communities can share their experiences and local expertise to shape a more equitable future.

While resilient neighbourhoods will not be built overnight, with the right tools, partnerships, and mindset, they are absolutely within reach.

Download the Social Wellbeing Toolkit

‘Ramboll has experience delivering actionable approaches to resilience that are systemic and inclusive, where resilient societies constitute multiple and integrated capacities that reduce social and material vulnerabilities, continuously delivering critical services and protecting the wellbeing of all communities during extreme climate events.’

Shira de Bourbon Parme
Principal Consultant

Want to know more?

  • Shira de Bourbon Parme

    Principal Consultant

    Shira de Bourbon Parme

  • Christine Lunde Rasmussen

    Global Service Lead, Societal Impacts & Policy

    +45 51 61 68 57

    Christine Lunde Rasmussen

  • Debbie Spillane

    Global MarComm Lead

    +45 53 67 10 43

    Debbie Spillane

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