2025 Reports

Urban Planning for Climate Change: Mendoza City and the Piedmont

Ramirez-Cuesta, Alejandra; Cantore, Maria

The city of Mendoza is in an arid region where ecosystems and water resources are highly vulnerable, exacerbating social inequalities and environmental hazards. The policy challenge is to preserve the environment and mitigate climate risks in the Piedmont. These risks arise from human activities and urban expansion, natural hazards, and climate change. This case study examines Mendoza’s strategies to protect and regenerate the natural environment of the Piedmont, and to improve the conditions and adaptive capacity of poor urban residents living in vulnerable areas from a multi-level governance perspective. A multi-level governance approach has been developed to address the complexity of the Piedmont. This approach underlines the importance of collaboration in the development of public policies to address socio-environmental risks.

This case exemplifies the significance of urban planning in mitigating the impacts of climate change, including the challenges related to addressing environmental issues that intersect multiple jurisdictional boundaries. Despite the development of a comprehensive multi-level governance structure, there is a need for enhanced coordination among the urban centers located in the Piedmont of the metropolitan area. The second challenge is related to the limited local and global funding available needed to scale up adaptation policies.

Mendoza provides an example to address climate change in an arid region. It illustrates a pathway to transformation by integrating mitigation and adaptation through ecosystem-based solutions supported by urban planning. It also applies a multilevel governance structure to co-generate knowledge to enhance the policy implementation process. Furthermore, the novelty of these policies lay in the fact that they address the critical issue of urban inequalities among the most vulnerable populations in developing countries by integrating climate change and sustainable development policies.

Keywords: climate change equity, multi-level governance, ecological restoration