C40 and Ramboll publish new toolkit to guide city officials, planners and other key urban stakeholders in embedding social outcomes into urban projects and strategies.
Cities around the world are reimagining how urban life should look and feel by placing people’s health, happiness and resilience at the centre of urban planning. Now, a powerful new resource from C40 Cities and Ramboll, supported by the Ramboll Foundation, offers a practical way to turn that vision into reality.
The Social Wellbeing Toolkit helps city officials, planners, and other key urban stakeholders embed wellbeing outcomes into every stage of neighbourhood-scale projects, from early planning to implementation and evaluation.
As more policymakers, investors and civil society leaders recognise that bold climate action must also deliver social justice, this toolkit fills a crucial gap. It turns the often-abstract goal of ‘social wellbeing’ into a clear, actionable framework, ensuring urban development strengthens both communities and the climate.
Helene Chartier, director of urban planning and design at C40 Cities, said: “For too long, urban planning and city development have prioritised cars and traffic flow, fuelling urban sprawl, fragmenting land use and reducing essential spaces for nature and community life. This approach not only drives environmental harm, including rising emissions and air pollution, it compromises people’s health and wellbeing.
“This toolkit offers a clear, integrated framework that places social wellbeing at the heart of urban projects – empowering cities to create more inclusive and sustainable spaces that benefit both people and the planet.”
The toolkit features two core components designed to guide real-world action:
Guidance Document – An overview of foundational concepts, key principles and a collaborative, outcomes-driven approach for prioritising social wellbeing in urban planning.
Workbook – A set of hands-on worksheets and templates that walk users through a six-step process to co-develop a project-specific theory of change.
Rooted in the Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods approach, the toolkit draws directly from pilot projects in Copenhagen and Warsaw. These cities partnered with C40 and Ramboll to test practical ways of assessing urban vulnerabilities, defining community-led outcomes and ensuring benefits reach those who need them most.
Christine Lunde Rasmussen, global head of society impact and policy at Ramboll Management Consultancy, said: “As the sustainable transition of our cities gains momentum, it is becoming increasingly clear that this shift deeply impacts the lives and wellbeing of individual citizens and local communities. While the transition has the potential to make cities healthier and more inclusive, it can also pose risks to social cohesion, especially for the most vulnerable among us.
“Through our ongoing dialogue with cities and our work developing the toolkit, one thing is certain – cities need practical, action-oriented tools and the right skills to embed social wellbeing into the transition. This is essential not only to protect communities, but also to build trust and ensure meaningful participation from citizens and stakeholders every step of the way.”
Click here for more information and to download the Social Wellbeing Toolkit.
