Planning Cities for People

This guide by Energy Innovation outlines eight quantifiable urban planning principles designed to help China develop prosperous, low-carbon cities. It argues that high-density cities cannot be designed around the car and must instead prioritize public transport, walking, and bicycling to avoid gridlock, pollution, and economic stagnation.

• The guide proposes eight core principles for sustainable urban planning: developing walkable neighborhoods, prioritizing bicycle networks, creating dense street networks, supporting high-quality transit, zoning for mixed-use, matching density to transit capacity, creating compact regions, and regulating parking and road use.
• To promote walking, the guide recommends limiting average block length to 150 meters, restricting through-traffic street width to 45 meters, and ensuring retail uses are within 1 meter of the sidewalk.
• Bicycle networks should include dedicated lanes at least 3 meters wide in each direction on most streets and car-free corridors spaced no more than 800 meters apart.
• Efficient traffic flow is better achieved through a dense network of narrower streets rather than wide roads; the guide suggests a minimum of 50 intersections per square kilometer.
• High-quality transit should be accessible, with high-capacity corridors every 800 to 1,000 meters and all housing and job centers located within 400 meters of a local transit station.
• Mixed-use zoning should ensure that shops, schools, parks, and services are within 400 meters of housing, with neighborhood parks within 500 meters and regional parks within 1 kilometer.
• To reduce urban sprawl and commute times, new sub-centers should be located adjacent to existing cities, with a goal to limit commutes to approximately 5 kilometers or 15 minutes.
• Congestion can be managed by limiting parking ratios in employment areas to 0.2 stalls per worker and implementing road-use charges, citing Singapore and London as examples where such measures reduced congestion and increased transit use.

APA

Energy Innovation (n.d.). Planning Cities for People. https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/Planning-Cities-for-People-1.pdf

Chicago

Energy Innovation. Planning Cities for People. n.d. https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/Planning-Cities-for-People-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Energy Innovation |title=Planning Cities for People |url=https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/Planning-Cities-for-People-1.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{energyinnovationndplanning, author = {{Energy Innovation}}, title = {{Planning Cities for People}}, institution = {Energy Innovation}, url = {https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/Planning-Cities-for-People-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }