Running after pathways: a critical reflection on climate change roadmaps

Cities are since several years now at the centre of a growing debate about their role in climate change. Multiple measures, responsibilities and directions have been identified in order to cope with this growing issue. There is a deep reason why cities are at the core of this debate, more than other areas: cities are the places where most people live and where it is expected that the majority of mankind will live in the future. The availability of services, relational places, support groups, and working spaces has made urban areas the elected environment to live in. More than reversing this trend, the COVID-19 pandemic has somehow increased the need to reshape cities in order to ease and improve life quality in them, with the implementation of new and more significant green and open spaces. Those reflections and interventions usually go also in the direction of improving urban adaptation capabilities to climate events. Green and open spaces are, in fact, some of the most used strategies to make cities more resilient. However, those actions do not seem to be sufficient to improve people’s life nor to really support the climate transition. Some of the last reports on climate change show that even if some measures have been taken, those are still not sufficient to meet the expected goals. This chapter will deepen these points, trying to focus on climate transition roadmaps and pathways.