Can a Charter help us achieve an Urban Vision?

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An example of a 10-point Charter to support an urban Vision, which use the Urban 2.0 principles and the Urban 2.0 system, is described below (from the Urban 2.0 website). 

This example Charter fits on one page - the longer a Charter is, the less memorable it is for people.

Comments and feedback to help improve this Charter are appreciated (it is put forward as a "Work in Progress"). If you would like a document version (in Word or PowerPoint), please get in touch.

The prosperity and the development of our city / town is shaped and defined by the people who live and work here. 

Our Vision is driven by the citizens of our communities and our businesses. Everyone of all ages is involved in ideas and action. At agreed points in time we renew our thinking with "a blank sheet". This is done to retain a freshness and a vitality to our policy, planning and design, which is discussed in the places where our communities and our businesses gather, not just at Town Hall. We work together to agree our priorities and how to knit together short-term actions to achieve long-term improvements for everyone and for nature.

Citizens and businesses help to shape our public services, including public transport and streets management, infrastructure and amenities, health services, education and community support of all types. Resources for public services are prioritised, and key indicators for the resourcing split are used to monitor effectiveness and to tackle under-performance or stresses.

Citizens and businesses help make our environment greener and healthier - which we monitor in various ways. Greenery and water spaces are integrated in our urban policy, planning and design, from small spaces to large ones. Nature in the public realm is a priority. The performance of buildings and infrastructure is measured against key indicators for efficiency, sustainability and resilience. We strive to make our local neighbourhoods beautiful and connected to each other and our urban centre. 

We focus on ensuring that where people live is well connected to good local services and our urban centre, without needing a car to get to these services (except for those with mobility restrictions). 

Walking, cycling and other "active mobility" is central to our streets planning and design. Changing streets takes time, and we tackle change incrementally. We are working to ensure neighbourhoods are walkable and cycling-friendly. Public transport is prioritised over private car use, with regular services in place to provide people with efficient travel choices that are better than using a car. 

The circular economy is embedded into how we function. It includes how we consume goods, products and services including energy, water, fuel, food, technology, textiles and others. We reduce what we consume, we reuse before we recycle and we minimise waste in all our activities. We support local producers and we focus on "local to local" connections with others around the world in a meaningful and direct way. We use key indicators to monitor our circular economy progress.

When we identify opportunities for change that require investment, we create compelling investment cases for investors (of all types) which focus on meaningful value. We agree meaningful targets and benefits to measure, which connect from our local level to the international level.

Quantifiable and responsible action to adapt to climate change and to take mitigating action to address this change is core to our resilience action, including appropriate ways to fund climate-related initiatives and key indicators to measure against. 

We focus on action to avoid disasters. We do this by understanding our vulnerability and exposure to hazards (flooding, storms, wildfires, heatwaves, drought and others), and agreeing our risk tolerance, key indicators to measure against and action to achieve resilience within our means and resources.

Everyone is involved in the governance of what we do, and the governing authority is transparent with its plans and management. Citizens of all ages and businesses are involved in setting and monitoring the key indicators with thresholds that we use to measure our performance against. If thresholds are reached for any indicators we take action to address them in an appropriate way. 

If you have any feedback on this example Charter, please let us know.