As record heatwaves and floods batter cities across the world, the debate around urban resilience has never been more urgent. Cities sit at the epicentre of climate risks, accounting for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions from buildings and construction, and housing over half the world’s population. While urban planners increasingly invest in net-zero buildings, resilient infrastructure and green mobility, there remains a powerful but underleveraged solution: gender-inclusive urban design. Designing gender-inclusive cities – through safer streets, shaded walkways, accessible childcare and reliable public transport – naturally promotes low-carbon, energy-efficient living. For example, women’s daily interactions with urban spaces differ from men. In India, about 45% of women walk to work, compared to only 27% of men and nearly 84% of trips undertaken by women occur via public transport, as they juggle multi-stop trips shaped by caregiving and other responsibilities, and navigate public spaces with heightened safety concerns. Each of these patterns has clear climate co-benefits. Compact, walkable neighbourhoods reduce reliance on cars; shaded, well-lit pathways reduce heat stress and energy demand; and proximity to childcare infrastructure cuts emissions from long commutes.Cities like Vienna show what this looks like in practice, translating the idea of gender-inclusive design into measurable improvements in safety, accessibility and climate resilience. A street in Vienna, showing shaded corridors and wide accessible walkways. Photo Credit: marcel_rnsn and jarmolukSince the 1990s, Vienna has systematically mainstreamed gender in all levels of urban planning, launching over 60 pilot projects spanning housing, transport and public spaces. Housing complexes like Frauen-Werk-Stadt I feature shared courtyards, on-site childcare and ground-floor services, while widened sidewalks and redesigned parks have improved safety and accessibility for all. The planning process included consultations with women, migrants and caregivers, making inclusion a structural priority. By mid-2000s, 65% of all trips in Vienna were made on foot, by bike, or by public transit, lowering car use from 40% in 1993 to 27% by 2014. Between 2010 and 2019, Vienna’s transport-related greenhouse gas emissions decreased from roughly 3.5 million tonnes to about 3 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalents, marking an estimated reduction of around 15% over the decade. Residential projects with natural ventilation and shared laundry facilities reduced local energy demand. For example, a monitored refurbishment of multi-unit residential buildings in Vienna found space heating demand dropped from about 180 kWh/m² per year to 36 kWh/m² per year, equating to an 80% reduction after conversion to modern energy-efficient standards with natural ventilation and integrated façade systems. Phasing Out Gas – Heating and Cooling Vienna 2040 reported that final energy consumption for heating, cooling and water use has already declined 20% per capita since 2005, with a target of 30% by 2040. Vienna’s success shows that when design reflects daily realities, it also delivers climate dividends.A street in Vienna, showing shaded corridors and wide accessible walkways. Photo Credit: marcel_rnsn and jarmolukVienna is not alone. Barcelona focussed on urban planning with a gender perspective, integrating care work into city planning and redesigning urban spaces to reflect daily life needs. In India, Kerala has launched strategic policies and initiatives like mandating 10% of urban plan funds for women-focused projects and training for leadership in planning. Projects like Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP) are integrating gender-responsive planning in five cities. The state has also introduced gender-responsive city budgets and safe access initiatives to boost women’s roles in planning and improve access to public space.For example, the Sustainable Urban Development Project, as part of The Kerala Gender Action Plan, institutionalised gender perspectives in city planning, ensuring women’s leadership in decision-making and project implementation. By embedding gender considerations in infrastructure and spatial planning, Kerala’s approach can promote compact, accessible city layouts that cut commute distances, reduce transport emissions and improve community resilience.A street with wide and accessible sidewalks in Barcelona. Photo Credit: CCPAPA, pixabay.comThese models offer lessons not only for European cities but also for rapidly urbanising regions like South Asia, where similar design principles could simultaneously address safety, access and emissions.In India, the momentum for gender-inclusive planning is accelerating. The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) recently launched its first gender-inclusive urban design manual, developed through extensive spatial audits and discussions with over 80 people, including sanitation workers and those from the LGBTQ communities. This manual sets guidelines for parks, bus shelters, markets, transit stations, with checklist-based tools to help evaluate inclusivity of future infrastructure projects. For instance, in parks, the manual recommends perimeter seating, segmented play areas and accessible toilets, based on findings that only 30% of users were women with many citing poor facilities and safety. Newly renovated public toilets should now include coat hooks, vending machines, accessible signage. New tenders for urban infrastructure now require the manual’s use. Since mid-2025 GCC has begun rolling out pilot projects such as 62 bus shelters redesigned for safety, accessibility and inclusivity. These shelters now feature better lighting, CCTV and safer seating, based directly on findings from spatial audits. Public spaces such as streets and parks are also being redesigned to align with these standards.Yet, such examples remain exceptions. Even as cities like Vienna, Barcelona and Chennai demonstrate models for inclusive design with quantifiable improvements in safety, energy use and mobility, international frameworks including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), still relegate gender to the margins of climate finance and policy design. The UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance 2024 report explicitly acknowledges a “disconnect between the need for gender‑responsive finance and the levels of funding being delivered.” Climate finance mechanisms seldom ask whether infrastructure projects address women’s lived realities. While COP29 extended the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender and committed to a new gender action plan for COP30, key discussions and financing decisions still lack integration of gender-inclusive planning as a foundational climate strategy.Just 0.01% of global climate finance supports projects that directly empower women and advance climate action. Without mainstreamed gender-responsive approaches, climate finance risks reinforcing inequalities and losing opportunities to support those most affected by climate change.In India, city planners, architects and sustainability professionals point to persistent roadblocks: workplace cultures that still favour male leadership, career interruptions for women due to caregiving and policy gaps that do not incentivise gender-sensitive zoning codes or building standards. The GCC manual, for instance, reveals that only 30% of park users in Chennai were women, with 24% citing lack of toilets and 20% poor infrastructure as main deterrents. Safety remains paramount; 25% of surveyed transit users select their routes primarily on perceived security, directly linking design improvements to climate-relevant shifts such as enhanced mobility and reduced car use.COP29’s new decade of action on gender and climate offers a window to change that. The UNFCCC’s push for a new gender action plan underscores both progress and the urgent need to close gaps. As parties gear up for COP30, global examples like Vienna and Indian cities like Chennai provide tangible models for embedding gender at the heart of climate adaptation and decarbonisation strategies. Their design manuals and lived experience approaches should not be viewed as local oddities, but as blueprints for global climate policy and as proof that truly inclusive, climate-smart cities are within reach.Pooja Suresh Hollannavar is an architectural writer, editor and researcher currently investigating the relationship between gender, climate change, and the built environment.