Increasingly complex challenges and systemic risks in urban development and planning require systems methods and solutions. This policy brief summarizes the experience of a collaborative systems modelling workshop on the health co-benefits of urban green spaces in Guangzhou, China. The workshop shows that collaborative systems modelling has the potential to surface new, integrated, and sustainable solutions for complex problems, such as urban development, spatial planning, governance, and climate change. For the collaborative systems modelling approach to succeed, it is critical to have the participation of diverse interdisciplinary stakeholders for the co-creation of solutions. Further, while noting that collective learning and capacity building take time, we recommend policymakers apply this method where and when possible, for example in urban planning projects, to address complex problems in cities while at the same time ensuring the representation of the needs and visions of stakeholders in the modelling process. Collaborative systems modelling can be considered a contribution to intelligent urban systems governance.

Research on solutions for climate change in the urban transport sector has focused primarily on the technological and spatial planning perspectives; the social dimension of behavioral changes is relatively less explored, particularly in the southern European small city context. In this paper, we examine how social determinants and two other endogenous factors—motivation and knowledge—influence sustainable mobility choices in Portugal, through a case study of a city micro-mobility pilot, using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and the Social Information Processing Theory (SIPT) as an analytical framework, and mix-method analysis from questionnaires, in-depth individual interviews, and other information collected throughout the pilot program. Motivation, as we found, was the strongest factor that contributed to comprehension, leading to a primarily positive attitude change towards pro-environmental behavior. Our research emphasizes the importance of mechanisms that stimulate citizens’ motivation and facilitate communication in sustainability pilot programs.

Cities are experiencing multiple impacts from global environmental change, and the degree to which they will need to cope with and adapt to these challenges will continue to increase. We argue that a ‘complex systems and resilience management’ view may significantly help guide future urban development through innovative integration of, for example, grey, blue and green infrastructure embedded in flexible institutions (both formal and informal) for multi-functionality and improved health. For instance, the urban heat island effect will further increase city-centre temperatures during projected more frequent and intense heat waves. The elderly and people with chronic cardiovascular and respiratory diseases are particularly vulnerable to heat. Integrating vegetation and especially trees in the urban infrastructure helps reduce temperatures by shading and evapotranspiration. Great complexity and uncertainty of urban social-ecological systems are behind this heatwave-health nexus, and they need to be addressed in a more comprehensive manner. We argue that a systems perspective can lead to innovative designs of new urban infrastructure and the redesign of existing structures. Particularly to promoting the integration of grey, green and blue infrastructure in urban planning through institutional innovation and structural reorganization of knowledge-action systems may significantly enhance prospects for improved urban health and greater resilience under various scenarios of climate change.

Debates on carbon costs and carbon pricing to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are emerging as cities develop local policies and programs to achieve carbon neutrality. This paper focuses on how cities formulate economic instruments and adopt carbon pricing experiments to support their climate objectives. Extensive literature is available on science-policymaking interface Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) and on the two mainstream approaches of carbon cost formulation—Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) and Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC). Although, the literature on how governments develop climate policy instruments, particularly towards a local carbon cost, is recent. We start by reviewing these essential concepts and tools for carbon cost formulation. We then critically review a set of local carbon pricing experiments, totaling fourteen international cities, and confirm a great demand for scientifically robust, verifiable, and transferable carbon cost methodologies at the local level. We thus propose an approach to assess the short-term technology cost of CO₂ emission reduction in the mobility sector in Matosinhos municipality, Portugal. Our approach shows that a carbon cost methodology at the local level with robust, verifiable, and transferable results is possible. We advocate for a methodological advance to estimate versatile CO₂ prices suitable for local conditions.