Thriving: Making cities green, resilient, and inclusive in a changing climate

This report examines the two-way relationship between cities and climate change, concluding that cities also hold one of the keys to solving the climate crisis. With data from more than 10,000 cities, the report offers insight into how to help cities become greener, more resilient, and more inclusive – in other words, on how to help their cities thrive – in a changing climate. Cities in low- and lower-middle-income countries are less resilient to increasingly frequent climate change–related shocks and stresses.

These cities suffer larger negative economic impacts from extreme weather events than do cities in higher-income countries, especially when these events reinforce a city’s baseline climatic conditions. Lack of inclusiveness contributes to the lack of resilience. A city's resilience indicates how well it can withstand climate change-related shocks, as measured by factors like total output loss and population loss. A resilient city experiences minimal initial impacts from climate change-related shocks and recovers quickly. Resilience consists of two components: the size of the initial losses and the speed of recovery.