There are common things cities must try to do immediately:

• Let’s not respond to stress and disasters by making the climate crisis worse. Let’s do good things, climate positive things that also reduce short-term and long-term risk.
• Let’s address the heat island effect in every decision.
• Severely reduce the use of concrete, asphalt, plate glass, and steel -- use only when absolutely necessary, not because some rule says you should.
• Use only permeable semi-paving, to allow natural areas to connect with each other. Do not lock in land or trees with concrete. Living things cannot sequester carbon in a coffin.
• Stop cutting down trees, especially old ones, and especially for “construction or public works convenience”. Work harder to preserve living trees. Old trees absorb much more carbon everyday than young trees. Encourage the revival of natural water features to accompany them.
• Encourage lush planting and natural ponds on all available land -- city strips, medians, lawns, etc., -- for shade (reducing the heat island effect), carbon extraction, carbon storage, water retention, biodiversity support, and flood resilience.
• Preserve all reservoirs. We need them for water, emergencies, and power..
• Eliminate surface parking lots.
• The above seven patterns are part of what makes a “sponge city”.
• Replace surface parking with combined housing / public workshops, parks and gardens.
• Turn public buildings into climate shelters. Adapt those buildings, to better meet this need. Make sure there are climate shelters, public parks, and necessities all within a 5-15 minute walk from each person’s urban residence. Make sure that such places are designated based on the neighborhood decision. If the community wants a private or co-operative space to be the designated climate shelter, then support that decision.
• Stop supporting wasteful mega-projects: franchise sports stadiums, convention centers, newly fashionable export industries.
• Stop tearing down buildings. reuse is always ecologically better.
• Rewild in the city.
• Connect planted land in the city ... not “planters” or concrete bunkers with trees in them. Give the ground back to nature.
• Put drinking fountains, garbage bins, rcycling bins, and restrooms everywhere.
• paint pedestrian and bicyclist warnings for cars even on quiet streets.
• encourage buildings that do not require parking
• encourage local ownership for better building quality
• encourage local ownership to keep rent money in the community, prefereably in CDC’s, government, institutonal, or other public-interest hands.
• reduce colonization, i.e., external ownership and capital flight
• create rain gardens without concrete to filter storm water, replenish water tables, and create local reservoir ponds, with as wild an ecological profile as possible
•  convert suburbs to ecological paradises - the modifications needed to make them eco-villages are mainly policy
• keep buildings under 6 stories.
• worry about the negative effective of too much urban density on utility infrastructure
• build you own very light rail cars and tracks, reusing existing tracks when possible, with green ground areas.
• change “lawn care laws”, and prevent HOAs from implementing them, to allow for rewilding: you should be encouraged to let plants and wild grasslands grow. With a preference for native species that are climate change appropriate.
• create “builder’s yards” in every neighborhood, along with vocational training centers for maintenance, insulation, repair, construction, plumbing, electrical, agriculture, gardening etc.

These are from A Pattern Language (1977)

2.  THE DISTRIBUTION OF TOWNS

3.  CITY COUNTRY FINGERS

6.  COUNTRY TOWNS

7.  THE COUNTRYSIDE

9.  SCATTERED WORK

11.  LOCAL TRANSPORT AREAS

16.  WEB OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

18.  NETWORK OF LEARNING

21.  FOUR-STORY LIMIT

25.  ACCESS TO WATER

30.  ACTIVITY NODES

31.  PROMENADE

34.  INTERCHANGE

35.  HOUSEHOLD MIX

36.  DEGREES OF PUBLICNESS

37.  HOUSE CLUSTER

38.  ROW HOUSES

39.  HOUSING HILL

40.   OLD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

41.  WORK COMMUNITY

42.  INDUSTRIAL RIBBON

43.  UNIVERSITY AS A MARKETPLACE

45.  NECKLACE OF COMMUNITY PROJECTS

46.  MARKET OF MANY SHOPS

47.  HEALTH CENTER

48.  HOUSING IN BETWEEN

51.  GREEN STREETS

53.  MAIN GATEWAYS

56.  BIKE PATHS AND RACKS

57.  CHILDREN IN THE CITY

58.  CARNIVAL

59.  QUIET BACKS

60.  ACCESSIBLE GREEN

61.  SMALL PUBLIC SQUARES

62.  HIGH PLACES

63.  DANCING IN THE STREET

64.  POOLS AND STREAMS