Multilevel governance and partnerships are critical enablers of effective and equitable city climate action. The urgency of strengthening multilevel governance is amplified by the growing risk of climate overshoot, which threatens to push cities beyond safe adaptation limits. Urban areas, responsible for over 70% of global CO₂ emissions, are already facing intensifying heatwaves, flooding, and water stress (Lwasa et al., 2022). Building urban climate resilience will therefore depend on coherent governance structures and partnerships that enable cities to act decisively, scale innovation, and ensure inclusive participation.

However, city ambition continues to be constrained by weak vertical alignment and limited institutional coherence across national, regional, and local levels (Irvin et al., 2024). Achieving stronger alignment requires empowering local governments through clear mandates, devolved resources, and integrated planning systems that enable cities to act as active partners in national climate strategies. Initiatives such as the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships (CHAMP) exemplify this approach by creating co-designed coordination mechanisms that elevate local priorities and innovations into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and other global processes (CHAMP, 2025).

Establishing effective climate policies ultimately depends on achieving policy coherence, institutional arrangements, and coordination across scales (IPCC, 2023). Yet, in the Global Research and Action Agenda (GRAA), significant knowledge gaps remain regarding which institutional configurations most effectively facilitate genuine coordination and how national commitments can be translated into implementable and impactful local strategies.

Because systemic risks emerge at the intersections of sectors, cities require collaborative governance that integrates mitigation and adaptation, and community engagement across city systems such as energy, water, transport, and health systems (Dodman et al., 2022). Beyond alignment, climate action demands durable mechanisms that institutionalize collaboration and reduce fragmentation across systems. Partnerships must extend beyond government, as academia, civil society, business, and local communities co-produce the innovation and knowledge needed to close gaps in the Global Research and Action Agenda (Irvin et al., 2024) and achieve increased climate resilience. 

As a core theme of the 2026 Innovate4Cities Conference, multilevel governance and partnerships will anchor discussions on how strategic, cross-sectoral collaboration can operationalize global climate  commitments, manage overshoot risks, and connect local leadership to global climate ambition accelerating the transition toward resilient, low-carbon urban futures.

Session proposals under this track are invited to consider:

• How strengthened coordination across local, regional, and national levels can accelerate climate ambition;
• How partnerships can enhance climate resilience, unlock innovation, while ensuring knowledge coproduction and information integrity between cities, academia, business, and civil society can unlock innovation, and;
• How multi-level governance can translate global climate agendas into locally relevant and actionable pathways.

Housing and infrastructure systems shape emissions trajectories and the lived realities for billions of city dwellers. As rapid urbanization locks in development pathways for decades to come, decisions made today on housing, essential services, and infrastructure will determine whether cities advance toward sustainable, inclusive futures or reinforce existing inequalities (Dodman et al., 2022). 

Urban areas are already acutely exposed to climate hazards, and without integrated action, current investments risk entrenching patterns of vulnerability particularly in informal and low-income settlements (Dodman et al., 2022). This presents the need for a systemic shift toward climate-resilient urban development that deliberately integrates mitigation and adaptation, rather than addressing them in isolation.

A growing body of climate research shows that unplanned or exclusionary urban development amplifies risks such as flooding, heat stress, and cascading service failures, disproportionately affecting those in informal settlements. In contrast, integrated low-carbon and resilient systems deliver multiple co-benefits from improved public health and reduced emissions to enhanced biodiversity and social cohesion (UN-Habitat, 2022). 

Addressing informality therefore becomes a central priority: investments in climate-proof water, sanitation, drainage, transport, and waste systems are essential, alongside the inclusive upgrading of settlements through nature-based and hybrid solutions that restore ecosystems while advancing equity.

Scaling effective, inclusive, and integrated urban climate solutions requires moving beyond traditional top-down approaches. The Global Research and Action Agenda (GRAA) identifies key research priorities for advancing climate action with an emphasis on low-carbon, inclusive and sustainable approaches to housing, resilient infrastructure and data-driven methods for systems-level urban planning (Irvin et al., 2024). Achieving this vision depends on co-producing knowledge through partnerships between researchers, practitioners, and communities bridging science, policy, and lived experience to fill critical evidence gaps. 

Strong civic infrastructure, community engagement and participatory methods that recognize the interdependence of human and non-human systems are foundational to this process, ensuring that innovations in housing and infrastructure are not only technically sound but also socially just. This track therefore advances the collective research and action needed to steer urban development toward a more equitable, sustainable, and climate-resilient future.

Session proposals under this track are invited to consider:

• How sustainable housing and resilient infrastructure can reduce emissions, address vulnerabilities, and enhance equity in cities through community-led co-design;
• How innovative financing and planning approaches can support inclusive urban development by bridging research to implementation; and;
• How nature-based and hybrid solutions can transform infrastructure systems for climate-ready, sustainable urban futures.

Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are rapidly emerging as transformative enablers of urban climate action, creating new opportunities for cities to accelerate innovation, optimize resource management, and enhance evidence-based decision-making. As emphasized in the Global Research and Action Agenda (GRAA), digital and AI-driven solutions represent cross-cutting priorities for advancing climate knowledge and practice (Irvin et al., 2024). These technologies expand the capacity of cities to monitor emissions, model climate risks, adopt climate innovation and adaptation, manage infrastructure systems, and engage communities in participatory governance.

Beyond conventional applications, AI is reshaping how cities plan and act. Dynamic, data-driven systems are enabling adaptive and predictive climate action planning leveraging real-time insights to anticipate extreme climate events, enhance urban resilience, and allocate resources more efficiently. Moreover, AI can help harness local datasets to refine climate models and co-produce shared repositories of solutions that reflect the diversity of urban experiences (Koch & CTCN, 2025).

Yet, realizing this potential requires overcoming significant barriers. Many cities continue to face fragmented digital systems, limited technical capacity, and inadequate governance mechanisms. Ethical and data justice concerns remain critical, particularly around information integrity, disinformation, and the protection of Indigenous and local data sovereignty (Walter et al., 2020). The challenge, therefore, is to ensure that technological innovation is guided by robust ethical frameworks rooted in transparency, equity, and inclusion.

This track will address the opportunities and challenges of adopting digitalization and AI for city-led innovation and climate action, highlighting how cities and researchers are navigating these complexities to scale AI and digital solutions responsibly. It will explore the co-production of ethical frameworks, inclusive data governance models that uphold data sovereignty, and strategies to strengthen digital literacy and institutional readiness. Through coordinated investment, cross-sectoral partnerships, and inclusive governance, these efforts aim to help cities move from experimentation to the systemic adoption of AI and digital technologies driving the next generation of climate-ready, resilient, and equitable urban futures.

Session proposals under this track are invited to consider:

• How digital tools and AI can enable better climate data, risk modeling, and decision-making while ensuring information integrity and integrating diverse knowledge systems;
• How cities can overcome barriers of access, governance, and capacity to scale digital innovation through community participation and system based approaches;
• How digitalization can be harnessed to deliver inclusive, ethical, and climate-resilient urban futures.

Justice and equity are at the heart of transformative climate action. The Global Research and Action Agenda (GRAA) positions these as cross-cutting imperatives, calling for climate research, policy, and practice that confront systemic inequalities, bridge diverse knowledge systems, and empower inclusive, participatory responses. This includes recognizing intergenerational responsibility ensuring that today’s decisions safeguard the rights and well-being of future generations and valuing Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge systems that have long endured resilience and protection of natural systems. 

Equally important is advancing participatory governance and civic infrastructure, enabling youth, women, and historically marginalized communities to co-produce climate solutions and hold institutions accountable. Climate science must advance methodologies to measure distributional impacts, integrate Indigenous and local knowledge, and generate evidence on differential climate risks across populations, particularly addressing the vulnerabilities of informal settlements and informal economy workers. 

Embedding equity at the core of climate action requires strategies that redress historic inequities in access to housing, finance, and urban services (Irvin et al., 2024). Positioning Justice and Equity as a thematic track at I4C26 offers a platform to translate these principles into action, mobilizing research and practice that demonstrate how inclusive governance, knowledge co-production, and socially just transitions can be realized and scaled in cities.

Session proposals under this track are invited to consider:

• How climate research, policy, and practice can confront systemic inequalities and uphold intergenerational justice in shaping equitable urban futures;
• How Indigenous and local knowledge systems can be integrated with scientific approaches to co-produce inclusive and resilient climate solutions;
• How participatory governance and civic infrastructure can empower youth, women, and marginalized communities to lead and hold institutions accountable in just climate transitions.

Until 2030, to align with a 1.5ºC scenario (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018), cities need USD 4.3 trillion annually for mitigation alone. This goes up to USD 6 trillion annually from 2031 to 2050. For adaptation on the other hand, while data gaps persist, the climate finance requirements could be well over 2 trillion by the year 2050 based on estimates drawn from a number of large cities (CCFLA, 2024). Unlocking climate finance and strengthening implementation capacity remain among the most pressing hurdles for cities seeking to deliver on their climate ambitions. 

While the demand for resilient housing, infrastructure, and services is urgent, many municipalities, particularly small and medium-sized cities, struggle to move from planning to action due to limited project preparation capacity, data gaps, and insufficient technical expertise (Irvin et al., 2024). Addressing these challenges requires not only significant investment and increase in capacity but also coherent governance, institutional coordination, and research that directly supports the practical needs of these cities.

Bridging the gap between ambition and delivery will depend on targeted technical assistance, innovative partnerships, and knowledge exchange mechanisms that turn city-led ideas into inclusive, investable projects (Clark et al., 2018). Enabling city-level access to finance, building institutional readiness, and aligning local priorities with national and global frameworks will require advancements in evidence and innovation. (Apostolovic et al., 2023).

The Global Research and Action Agenda (GRAA) identifies finance and implementation as critical areas where research, innovation, and practice must converge to advance inclusive financial strategies, integrated planning, and capacity development. Research priorities include strengthening the capacity of small and medium-sized cities, assessing resource flows through circular economy models, and conducting lifecycle cost analyses of blue–green infrastructure solutions. Other vital areas include integrating mitigation and adaptation in comprehensive planning, understanding the trade-offs of delayed versus accelerated climate action, and developing robust risk assessments for climate vulnerabilities.

The finance and implementation track will seek to progress knowledge, tools, and partnerships needed to ensure that resources not only flow but are effectively deployed. The framing encourages evidence-based approaches such as methods to quantify the short- and long-term benefits of climate solutions and highlights locally grounded innovation as essential to shaping equitable, resilient, and climate-ready urban futures.

Session proposals under this track are invited to consider:

• How cities can strengthen institutional capacity and project preparation, particularly in small and medium-sized cities, to translate climate plans into investable, scalable, and inclusive projects;
• How financial and governance innovations including circular economy models, lifecycle cost analysis, and integrated mitigation–adaptation planning can improve the efficiency and impact of climate investments;
• How evidence and partnerships can accelerate implementation, through improved risk assessments, methods to quantify short- and long-term benefits, and mechanisms that align finance flows with equitable and climate-resilient urban futures.