Recommended Actions by Actor to Achieve More Equitable and Sustainable Cities

The report outlines seven key transformations—infrastructure design, service provision, data collection, urban employment, financing, land management, and governance—to close the urban services divide. It assigns specific roles to city governments, national governments, civil society, the private sector, and the international community to ensure that urban growth is inclusive, climate-resilient, and sustainable.

• To achieve equitable infrastructure, cities must prioritize the needs of neglected populations and shift toward low-carbon, climate-resilient designs. This includes democratizing street space for walking, cycling, and public transport, accelerating the transition to cleaner cooking fuels, and extending piped water and sewer networks to under-served areas.
• Cities in the global south can expand service access in the short and medium term by partnering with and integrating informal, semi-formal, or community-run service providers into unified delivery systems, provided there are regulations to prevent exploitative pricing.
• Improving local data collection through community engagement and new technologies, such as satellite imaging and drones, is essential for inclusive governance and diagnosing service gaps that affect the most vulnerable residents.
• Urban employment policies should be transformed to recognize the economic value of informal workers, granting them legal identity, social protection, and access to public spaces and procurement opportunities to boost citywide economic resilience.
• Closing the urban services divide requires increased investment and innovative financing, including targeted subsidies for low-income consumers, land value capture, and the use of social cost-benefit analysis in financial planning.
• Sustainable urban growth depends on transparent land management and integrated spatial planning that limits land speculation, protects ecological areas, and upgrades informal settlements in situ rather than displacing residents to the periphery.
• Effective urban transformation requires a shift in governance toward diverse coalitions of public, private, and grassroots actors, supported by policy alignment across local, regional, and national levels of government.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Recommended Actions by Actor to Achieve More Equitable and Sustainable Cities. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2022-10/recommended-actions-by-actor.pdf?VersionId=2W4a1sfH2ZStOOnzDiqRTbg60wpFt1pP

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Recommended Actions by Actor to Achieve More Equitable and Sustainable Cities. n.d. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2022-10/recommended-actions-by-actor.pdf?VersionId=2W4a1sfH2ZStOOnzDiqRTbg60wpFt1pP.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Recommended Actions by Actor to Achieve More Equitable and Sustainable Cities |url=https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2022-10/recommended-actions-by-actor.pdf?VersionId=2W4a1sfH2ZStOOnzDiqRTbg60wpFt1pP |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendrecommended, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Recommended Actions by Actor to Achieve More Equitable and Sustainable Cities}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2022-10/recommended-actions-by-actor.pdf?VersionId=2W4a1sfH2ZStOOnzDiqRTbg60wpFt1pP}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }