In an effort to help tackle the growing challenges of pollution, flooding, and water scarcity, urban leaders are emphasizing environmental resilience. 

Most cities surveyed report reduction of pollution as a key area of their environmental resilience plan. Water pollution, flooding, and scarcity are top-of-mind issues for nearly three-fourths of the city leaders surveyed. Flooding and water scarcity are massive challenges in African, Asian, Latin American, and MENA cities. The exposure to physical risks due to climate change and extreme weather events to a city’s critical infrastructure is a growing administrative challenge globally. And it will likely guide environmental policy-making in the coming years.

Prioritizing spending areas 

Many surveyed cities are spending on technologies that can help with real-time monitoring of water quality, air quality, and temperature. However, the urgency and criticality of building environmental resilience have not transformed into investments in technologies that can help track and monitor climate and environmental events. Less than one-third of cities surveyed are investing in such technology systems. 
 

Focusing on public transit

Cities may need to change the way they view urban infrastructure development, shifting away from car dependency, to encourage walking and biking as safe alternatives. Getting riders come back to public transit will be an important priority for many cities.
 

This could require cities to refocus on transportation networks to address the changing needs to hybrid work while ensuring they remain accessible, affordable, and flexible. A shift toward private transport modes, such as e-scooters, should be carefully planned and regulated, drawing on lessons learned from cities that have experienced hypergrowth of e-scooters in recent years.