This month, 33 cities from Accra to Tokyo committed, through the C40 Cities and UN-Habitat Urban Planning Accelerator, to climate-responsive urban planning models by 2035. The framework tackles sprawl, car-dependent growth, and rigid zoning. It promotes compact, polycentric, transit-oriented, nature-positive, and inclusive development.
No Indian city is on that list, even though India will add more urban residents than almost any other country over the next two decades, and a large share of the buildings and infrastructure that will exist in 2050 are yet to be built.
Density and transit decide where growth goes. They do not decide what that growth is made of.
The built environment generates around 42% of global greenhouse gas emissions. About 27% comes from operating buildings and about 15% from materials and construction. That 15% is embodied carbon. It responds to materials specification, and therefore to industrial supply chains. Upfront carbon alone is expected to account for roughly half of the footprint of new construction between now and 2050. India can close this gap by design.
Indian development plans are strong on land use, FSI, roads, and social infrastructure. They are weak on climate. These parameters apply to every city.
Ward-level mapping of flood, heat, cyclone, sea-level rise, landslide, and water-stress risk, converted into binding no-build, low-build, and conditional-build zones.
A city-wide inventory, for example using the GPC protocol, with sector targets and an estimate of the carbon that planned growth will lock in, including embodied carbon.
Material-intensity benchmarks per square metre, whole-building life cycle assessment above a size threshold, preferred low-carbon material lists, reuse-before-rebuild rules, and a demand forecast for cement, steel, and aggregates.
ECBC, ECSBC, and Eco Niwas Samhita as a floor, plus passive design, rooftop solar, district cooling where density justifies it, and a cooling demand plan linked to the India Cooling Action Plan.
Targets for tree canopy, cool roofs, and surface reflectance, with permeable and green surface ratios written into development control regulations.
Density and FSI linked to transit capacity, walkable catchments, parking caps, street design standards, and EV charging.
Rainwater harvesting and recharge, sponge-city features, treated wastewater reuse, decentralised waste processing, and construction and demolition capacity sized to the plan’s buildout.
Wetlands, lakes, floodplains, and urban forests treated as infrastructure, with a no-net-loss rule.
Heat-safe, flood-safe housing for low-income households and informal settlements, with inclusionary provisions and rental housing so climate action does not price people out.
Distribution-level renewables, storage, microgrids, smart metering, and grid capacity planned for e-mobility and cooling load.
Indicators, a baseline year, a mid-term review, a public dashboard, and a link to the city’s climate action plan and budget.
The main greenfield risk is building fast with conventional materials. The main brownfield risk is fragmented ownership, heritage, and little room to retrofit.
Map hydrology and risk before site selection and plotting. Protect natural drainage as the first layer of the plan.
Map hazard hotspots on existing areas. Target retrofits, drainage upgrades, and managed relocation where risk is extreme.
Set material-intensity caps and low-carbon specifications from day one. Plan on-site or nearby material hubs.
Retrofit and adaptive reuse first. Demolish only where justified. Mandate construction and demolition recycling.
Lay out the transit corridor and street grid before development. Tie density to transit rollout so the city does not sprawl.
Infill and densify around existing transit, after an audit of water, sewer, power, and road capacity.
Build the green building code into development control regulations for every plot.
Use retrofit incentives — TDR or FSI bonuses, property tax rebates — and audit the energy of the existing stock.
Build district cooling, renewable supply, common utility ducts, and wastewater reuse in from the start.
Renew leaking, ageing networks and phase the decentralisation of energy, water, and waste.
Require an affordable share in each layout, delivered with the first phase.
Upgrade and redevelop informal settlements in situ, and protect households against displacement.
A dedicated SPV with a climate mandate and a carbon budget it must report against.
Reform the urban local body and development authority, with a climate cell and a cross-departmental mandate.
Carbon lock-in from building fast with conventional materials.
Fragmented ownership, heritage constraints, and limited space for retrofitting.
Today the two are not connected. These are the gaps between a climate-responsive plan and the materials that can actually build it.
Product-level embodied carbon data is limited. Environmental Product Declarations are few. Life cycle assessment skills are scarce among architects, engineers, and contractors.
Credible benchmarks stay out of reach.
Blended cements, calcined clay, slag-based binders, and recycled aggregate are underspecified or treated as risky.
Engineers default to the familiar option. Low-carbon choices stay niche.
L1 bidding, little green public procurement, and schedules of rates that do not price low-carbon variants.
Producers cannot justify the investment.
Each city, agency, and developer buys separately and in small lots.
There is no aggregated offtake to underwrite low-carbon production.
Fly ash and slag depend on coal power and blast-furnace steel — the systems being decarbonised — and supply is regionally uneven.
Clinker substitution may hit a ceiling. Calcined clay and other new materials need scale and standards.
Hydrogen-based steel, scrap-based electric arc furnaces on clean power, carbon capture in cement, and renewable captive power are capital-intensive and early stage.
Neither buyers nor lenders currently absorb the premium.
Labels are emerging, for example for green steel, but they are not uniform across cement, glass, aluminium, insulation, and bricks.
Greenwashing risk, and tenders that are hard to enforce.
In-situ construction dominates. Bricks and many building products sit in an unorganised sector. Prefabrication is low, and wastage on site is high.
Low-carbon materials are misapplied or poorly detailed.
River sand is scarce, manufactured sand quality is uneven, and haulage relies on long road freight.
Higher cost, higher emissions, and local environmental damage.
High-performance glazing, some insulation, heat pumps, efficient chillers, and battery cells often depend on imports, while local products vary in quality.
Delays, cost volatility, and weak lifecycle data.
Construction and demolition recycling exists in only a few cities. Recycled aggregate and reclaimed steel are rarely accepted in specifications.
Virgin material demand stays high.
Small producers cannot fund cleaner kilns. Carbon Credit Trading Scheme incentives are still maturing. Housing, power, steel, industry, environment, and standards bodies work in silos. No master plan includes a regional materials supply plan.
Cleaner production stays with large firms.
Forecast cement, steel, aggregate, and other materials, with carbon implications and supply options.
State-level or multi-city procurement of low-carbon cement, steel, and building products, with advance offtake for verified producers.
Update codes, BIS standards, and state schedules of rates so low-carbon options are specified, priced, and accepted.
Support an EPD and material carbon database, and require declarations for materials in public projects.
Co-locate recycling, precast, and low-carbon material hubs near growth corridors to cut transport and waste.
Connect carbon trading, green credit, and green finance to verified production, with a window for smaller firms to adopt cleaner technology.
The 74th Amendment intends empowered urban local bodies and metropolitan planning. In practice, planning often sits with state departments and development authorities, metropolitan committees are rarely effective, and cities lack staff, funds, and technical capacity. A workable architecture has five layers.
National
A body spanning housing and urban affairs, environment, power, road transport, steel, industry, BEE, and BIS.
Revise master plan guidelines such as URDPFI to include climate and embodied carbon. Harmonise standards, taxonomy, and data. Set national procurement guidance.
State
Chaired at chief minister or chief secretary level, with a cell linked to the State Action Plan on Climate Change.
Make a climate chapter mandatory in town and country planning law. Update schedules of rates, pool finance, run green procurement, and build urban local body capacity.
Metropolitan
An empowered metropolitan planning committee or development authority, with unified transport and a regional water and risk authority.
Plan transit, floodplains, watersheds, utilities, and material hubs across municipal lines.
City
A mayor-led climate cabinet, a chief climate or sustainability officer, a climate cell across planning, engineering, water, transport, health, and disaster management, and ward committees.
Own a climate action plan legally linked to the master plan. Climate-tag the budget. Run one window for green approvals. Operate an urban data observatory.
Delivery
A city or state platform or SPV, a project preparation facility, and credit-rated urban local bodies.
Prepare bankable projects. Use municipal bonds, challenge-fund approaches, blended finance, and public–private partnerships. Aggregate city demand for low-carbon materials.
Climate provisions sit inside statutory master plans and development control rules, not in voluntary side documents.
Each city names a lead with authority across departments, development authorities, and utilities.
Capital budgets, climate budget tagging, and project pipelines follow the master plan.
A city-region materials forum of producers, developers, contractors, research institutes, and standards bodies feeds demand forecasts into planning.
Annual third-party checks of carbon, risk, and resilience, a public dashboard, and citizen participation.
Recruit planners, climate specialists, and life cycle analysts. Greenfield cities use SPVs with a carbon-budget mandate. Brownfield cities strengthen local bodies, with retrofit and in-situ upgrading at the centre.
The sequence is short on purpose. It puts embodied carbon into the rules, names an owner in a mix of greenfield and brownfield cities, and creates the first public demand signal for low-carbon materials.
The C40 and UN-Habitat Accelerator shows that cities are ready to plan differently. India has the scale, the planning tools, the industrial base, and growing policy instruments to go further: treat materials as a planning variable, link master plans to supply chains, and build the institutions that can deliver.
Cities that plan the form of growth and the composition of what they build together will lock in far lower emissions for decades.
Related insights
This note builds on the C40 and UN-Habitat Accelerator and the embodied-carbon gap in that framework. Policy references reflect understanding at the time of writing. Verify current notifications, thresholds, and scheme details before using them in formal work.