The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts has conducted a consultation on the draft National Urban Policy (NUP), seeking feedback on the role that all levels of government, industry and the community can play in improving Australian cities and suburbs.

Due to Australia’s high urbanisation, reducing emissions from cities is crucial to achieving the nation’s climate targets, protecting its citizens from major climate change impacts, increasing access to nature and improving liveability for those who live, work and visit those cities.

Transitioning Australian cities to net zero emissions can only be achieved through transformations in the urban environment, supported by adequate multi-level governance and finance mechanisms. The NUP is an opportunity to build the national policy framework to enable rapid urban decarbonisation and achieve net zero Australian cities.

Climateworks Centre welcomes the development of a more national approach to urban policy.

Climateworks recommends that the policy could be improved by:

• increasing the ambition and integration of decarbonisation across the structure of the policy, as well as providing further specificity about the actions needed to tangibly implement it
• integrating the ‘sustainability’ objective into Australia’s national climate commitments (including city-specific emissions targets), and applying a city decarbonisation lens to all urban funding and policies
• being more explicit about the role the federal government could play for urban decarbonisation policy, as an implementer, enabler and convener.