Vitoria-Gasteiz: bringing justice into a mature sustainability agenda
Vitoria-Gasteiz is a medium-sized, compact and well-balanced city, internationally recognised for sustainable urban planning and high quality of life. With around 263,000 residents, the capital of the Basque Country combines a medieval historic centre, modern urban expansion and a strong relationship with nature.
The city is surrounded by the Green Ring of Vitoria-Gasteiz, a network of peri-urban parks with high ecological and landscape value. This long-standing environmental commitment makes Vitoria-Gasteiz a relevant Replicant City for JUST4CARE: it already has strong sustainability foundations and now seeks to deepen how justice and inclusion are integrated into climate resilience.
Vitoria-Gasteiz overview and replication context
Vitoria-Gasteiz offers a different mirror to the pilot cities. It is not a large capital like Madrid, Budapest or Rome, but a medium-sized city with a strong planning culture, a compact urban form and significant experience in environmental policy.
Its replication value lies in a central question for JUST4CARE: how can a city with advanced sustainability policies integrate a more explicit justice lens into climate adaptation?
The city combines urban, industrial and rural areas within the municipality. It has a significant older population, a diverse resident base and urban districts where exposure to heat, lower vegetation cover and population density create differentiated climate risks.
Vitoria-Gasteiz climate and justice challenges
Climate scenarios indicate that temperatures in Vitoria-Gasteiz could increase by 4°C by the end of the century. Total annual precipitation is expected to decrease, while the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are expected to increase.
The main hazards identified for the municipality include rain and river flooding, heatwaves, droughts and extreme winds. These risks do not affect all areas or residents equally.
The highest risk has been identified in central districts, where heat exposure is higher due to population density, sensitivity is increased by dense housing conditions, and adaptive capacity may be lower because of limited vegetation and other local factors.
The city has already collected substantial information on climate risks, but needs further support to analyse this information from multiple perspectives and translate it into robust, actionable planning at neighbourhood scale.
Vitoria-Gasteiz alignment with JUST4CARE
Vitoria-Gasteiz’s Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan 2030 sets a roadmap for transforming the territory into a climate-neutral and resilient city before 2050, while consolidating the municipality’s high environmental quality.
The plan includes targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, build partnerships for the local energy transition, address energy poverty, strengthen resilience to gradual climate change and extreme weather events, and improve knowledge on adaptation.
This aligns with JUST4CARE’s objectives, but also reveals a key opportunity: while the city already has strong climate and environmental goals, it wants to strengthen the justice dimension of resilience and make it more explicit in technical documents, municipal capacity and local priorities.
Vitoria-Gasteiz replication objective
Through JUST4CARE, Vitoria-Gasteiz aims to incorporate an inclusive vision into its resilience goals and improve the way the city identifies climate adaptation priorities.
The city is particularly interested in tools that can support municipal staff, strengthen capacity building and help integrate just resilience into technical documents, planning processes and future climate strategy updates.
Vitoria-Gasteiz as part of the Community of Practice
Vitoria-Gasteiz brings a strong environmental planning tradition, experience with climate and energy strategies, and a medium-sized city perspective that is highly relevant for replication across Europe.
Its contribution to JUST4CARE is especially valuable because it asks how established sustainability leadership can evolve towards more justice-oriented resilience: not only reducing emissions or managing risks, but understanding who is most affected, where adaptive capacity is lower, and how municipal planning can respond more fairly.
Within the Community of Practice, Vitoria-Gasteiz is interested in revisiting its catalogue of nature-based solutions through a stronger inclusion lens.
This includes reflecting on how major investments and public space transformation projects, such as the Loserrá Corridor, and the schoolyard naturalisation plan can contribute not only to environmental quality, but also to fairer access, comfort and climate protection.
The city is also beginning to integrate vulnerability more explicitly into planning processes, including through the tree strategy tender. JUST4CARE can support this shift by helping municipal teams connect climate risk, adaptive capacity and social equity in technical documents and future adaptation priorities.
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