News

      Integrating climate change adaptation into urban planning processes

      3 June 2025

      Integramos la adaptación al cambio climático en procesos de planificación urbana

      "We have developed the NBS monitoring strategy for the analysis of their effectiveness in adapting to climate change"

      We develop tools that enable cities to integrate climate change adaptation into urban planning and design from a renaturalisation perspective

      As part of the GrowGreen initiative, we are developing the Green Cities Framework, which provides a framework for cities to systematically integrate nature-based solutions (NBS) into urban planning instruments to structure adaptation.

      Climate resilience of cities

      We have developed the NBS monitoring strategy for the analysis of their effectiveness in adapting to climate change in order to highlight their key role in the climate resilience of cities.

      Six European cities are participating in the project: Manchester, Milan, Brest, Zadar, Wroclaw, and Valencia. TECNALIA's collaborative relationship with Valencia in the application of a climate resilient approach in the revision of the city's General Urban Development Plan.

      From a planning perspective, the study contributes positively to the city's General Urban Development Plan, the city's Green and Biodiversity Plan, and contributes to the city's Urban Strategy 2030 and the city's Missions 2030 for climate adaptation and climate neutrality.

      Regeneration of run-down neighbourhoods through the implementation of NBS

      The Clever Cities project offers a complementary framework to GrowGreen, focusing more on the regeneration of run-down neighbourhoods through the implementation of NBS. TECNALIA helps the cities involved to define their monitoring strategy, in which the social dimension is reinforced, resulting in a valuable contribution to the state of the art.

      • We are responsible for the replication and scaling strategies of the solutions in order to expand the impact generated.
      • We have developed the "Local Innovation Screening Tool" - LIST® for the assessment of innovation in urban regeneration projects, which has been used in projects under way.
      • We can highlight our support provided to Madrid in the definition of its monitoring strategy and in the development of a micro-scale modelling for a NBS intervention in the Usera neighbourhood; how to optimise an urban design to fully exploit the capacity of NBS to create urban spaces that are better adapted to climate change.

      Eight European cities are participating in the project. Milan, London and Hamburg are demonstrators, whereby we are coordinating the implementation process, and Madrid, Belgrade, Sfântu Gheorghe, Malmö, Larissa and Quito are replicators.