ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Climate Change and Cities
This article is part of the Research TopicBarriers and Enablers to Effective Climate Governance in CitiesView all 13 articles
Urban Design Climate Workshops Toolkits: Bridging Climate Science, Governance, and Community Needs Across Eight Cities
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
- 2Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Despite growing climate commitments, cities face persistent barriers to translating carbon neutrality and resilience goals into coherent, cross-sectoral actions. This article examines the Urban Design Climate Workshop (UDCW) methodology as a structured, multi-scalar approach to overcome these implementation gaps. Developed within the UCCRN network, UDCWs provide interoperable toolkits—Simulation and Facilitation—that support evidence-based, participatory co-design processes integrating climate adaptation, mitigation, and socio-spatial equity. Drawing on eight case studies across Europe, Africa, and South America, we analyze how the UDCW framework enables climate-responsive design amid fragmented governance, institutional inertia, and limited technical capacity. By spatializing community needs, quantifying climate benefits, and facilitating interdepartmental collaboration, UDCWs reveal critical governance gaps—such as siloed planning structures, policy misalignment, and lack of procedural mechanisms to enforce integrated strategies and to guarantee just urban adaptation. Yet, they also offer a pathway to streamline climate-resilient design and planning by embedding flexible, context-sensitive tools in decision-making processes capable of contributing to socio-spatial and climate justice. Findings indicate that upscaling climate action requires more than technical fixes: it demands adaptive governance cultures capable of aligning scientific knowledge, community aspirations, and enforceable policy instruments. UDCWs aim at demonstrating a replicable method to unlock stalled transitions and institutionalize just, climate-resilient transformations, providing a practical response to the multilevel barriers that continue to undermine sustainable urban climate governance.
Keywords: climate-resilient design1, co-design2, evidence-based design3, climate assessment4, just urban adaptation5
Received: 15 Jul 2025; Accepted: 04 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Visconti, Nocerino and Leone. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cristina Visconti
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.