Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

The Mayor of Barcelona and her counterparts from Madrid, Seville and Valencia, supported by the Spanish government, have signed the institutional declaration ‘Climate-neutral cities by 2030’. The document comes within the context of the Cities 2030 initiative, which promotes innovative forms of collaboration between cities and key stakeholders and sectors to speed up the transformation needed to become sustainable, healthy and resilient cities in response to the current climate emergency.

In Barcelona’s case, the fight against climate change is focused in three main areas:

1. Energy: creation of a municipal public energy operator to distribute energy from exclusively renewable sources.
2. Sustainable urban planning and mobility: with the Superblocks project, the low emission zone and the programme to protect areas outside schools.
3. Sustainable food: with the city as the world capital for this in 2021.

In 2020 the European Commission and the European Parliament decided to define five missions, one of which was for 100 European cities to become climate-neutral by 2030. This mission by the European Commission aims to support the transformation of these cities, speeding up compliance with the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda.