Increasing the transparency and accountability of urban climate governance in this way will serve as a starting point for identifying investment gaps and exploring opportunities for mobilizing new resources.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating impacts on cities – putting unprecedented pressure on municipal budgets and public services, exacerbating inequalities and revealing their extreme fragility to shocks.

The NITI Aayog launched a report on measures to ramp up urban planning capacity in India, recommending 'Healthy City for All' by 2030. The report also recommended a Central Sector Scheme '500 Healthy Cities Programme', for a period of 5 years, wherein priority cities and towns would be selected jointly by the states and local bodies.

All cities around the world face common challenges, related to the provision of housing, water, energy, transport and waste management. Achieving net zero at city scale requires a transformation in how energy is produced, distributed and consumed in support of these services.

The enduring image of a city is a busy population always on the move.

The Enabling Conditions for Urban Climate Finance Part 2 is a contribution of the World Bank to the State of Cities Climate Finance Report 2021. Part 2 analyzes enabling frameworks and presents solutions for mobilizing urban climate finance at scale to transition cities to low-carbon, climate-resilient development pathways.

The intention of the initiative is to identify lessons on how to strengthen urban finance, building on a range of city case studies from countries selected to represent different levels of urbanisation and structural transformation, examples, and discussions with key stakeholders.

This issue paper proposes a novel framework to support a transformative recovery in cities of the global South. COVID-19 has created a critical juncture in the development of cities in the global South.