Eighty per cent of America’s population lives in urban areas, writes Cooper Martin, Program Director for the Sustainable Cities Institute at the National League of Cities (NLC), in an article for Meeting of the Minds.

The majority live in small cities and local authorities that do not have the resources to fight climate change. While the NLC wants to support these authorities in fighting for resilience, it highlights that plans developed for one city cannot simply be “copied and pasted” into another city.  

The organisation aims to develop plans that could work in multiple cities, such as partnerships between authorities. Martin explains that in many authorities, one body alone is responsible for sustainability and that this work is not integrated into other bodies.

Within a partnership, it does not make sense to develop isolated sustainability initiatives, according to the article. Instead, the focus should be on amending existing plans to incorporate sustainable elements.    

A particular challenge facing cities is potential population growth. Martin explains that it will be decisive for authorities to introduce sustainability measures in good time. It would be meaningless to grow first and then consider sustainability when making cities resilient to the effects of climate change, he writes.