València, Spain’s third-largest city with more than 840,000 residents, is widely recognised for its leadership in sustainability and urban innovation. Its urban identity has been deeply shaped by the transformation of the former Turia riverbed into a major green corridor, and in recent years, the city has strengthened its international profile through its role in the EU Missions and as European Green Capital 2024.
València is highly relevant to the broader JUST4CARE conversation because it is facing increasingly visible climate risks, particularly heatwaves, urban heat island effects, and extreme rainfall events, as shown during the catastrophic 2024 DANA,which disproportionately affected the elderly population, people with disabilities, children, and young people, as well as socioeconomically vulnerable families.
València has been developing a “shared city” vision that seeks to ensure that the green transition leaves no one behind, and has shown particular interest in methods, training, and implementation frameworks that can help translate strategic ambition into operational, street-level action.
In this sense, València is looking for inspiration and practical tools to help move from planning to co-implementation, especially through staff training, monitoring and evaluation methods, and stronger ways of working with local communities to deliver just and care-oriented climate adaptation.
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Detailed information:
Alignment with JUST4CARE:
Valencia’s city vision, as established in the recent 2026 update of its Climate City Contract, is centered on the model of a “shared city” that ensures the green transition leaves no one behind. This vision directly aligns with just resilience objectives by explicitly integrating a Fair Transition filter into its Climate Action Plan (a framework developed through lessons learned from participation in the Fair Local Green Deals project). This strategic approach prioritizes territorial balance and the protection of vulnerable populations, operationalizing resilience through concrete care-oriented actions. These include the expansion of a Climate Shelter Network prioritized in high-risk districts, ensuring universal accessibility in public spaces to mitigate extreme heat, and strengthening specialized home services to provide a coordinated response for the elderly and dependent citizens most affected by climate-driven health risks.
By adopting JUST4CARE solutions, València aims to bridge the “implementation gap” identified in its recent 2026 Climate City Contract update, which marks the critical transition from strategic planning to a “co-implementation” phase where resilience becomes operational at the street level. Drawing on the cross-cutting criteria established through work in the Fair Local Green Deals project, the city expects to find within JUST4CARE the inspiration and concrete tools that provide support to move its just resilience vision forward (such as the specialized training framework for municipal staff and robust methodologies for monitoring, evaluation, and working with local communities).