New toolkit puts people at the heart of urban planning

Cities around the world are reimagining how urban life should look and feel by placing people’s health, happiness, and resilience at the centre of urban planning. Now, a powerful new resource from C40 Cities and Ramboll, supported by the Ramboll Foundation, offers a practical way to turn that vision into reality.

The Social Wellbeing Toolkit helps city officials, planners, and other key urban stakeholders embed wellbeing outcomes into every stage of neighbourhood-scale projects, from early planning to implementation and evaluation.

As more policymakers, investors, and civil society leaders recognise that bold climate action must also deliver social justice, this toolkit fills a crucial gap. It turns the often abstract goal of ‘social wellbeing’ into a clear, actionable framework, ensuring urban development strengthens both communities and the climate.

“For too long, urban planning and city development have prioritised cars and traffic flow, fuelling urban sprawl, fragmenting land use, and reducing essential spaces for nature and community life. This approach not only drives environmental harm, including rising emissions and air pollution, it compromises people's health and wellbeing.

This 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.

The toolkit features two core components designed to guide real-world action:

• Guidance Document – An overview of foundational concepts, key principles, and a collaborative, outcomes-driven approach for prioritising social wellbeing in urban planning.
• Workbook – A set of hands-on worksheets and templates that walk users through a six-step process to co-develop a project-specific Theory of Change.

Rooted in the Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods approach, the toolkit draws directly from pilot projects in Copenhagen and Warsaw. These cities partnered with C40 and Ramboll to test practical ways of assessing urban vulnerabilities, defining community-led outcomes, and ensuring benefits reach those who need them most.

“As the sustainable transition of our cities gains momentum, it is becoming increasingly clear that this shift deeply impacts the lives and wellbeing of individual citizens and local communities. While the transition has the potential to make cities healthier and more inclusive, it can also pose risks to social cohesion—especially for the most vulnerable among us,“ says Christine Lunde Rasmussen, Global Head of Society Impact & Policy, Ramboll Management Consultancy.

“Through our ongoing dialogue with cities and our work developing the toolkit, one thing is certain: cities need practical, action-oriented tools and the right skills to embed social wellbeing into the transition. This is essential not only to protect communities, but also to build trust and ensure meaningful participation from citizens and stakeholders every step of the way.”