This guide aims to help city and urban practitioners in designing and implementing a Low Carbon City Development Program (LCCDP) that complies with the LCCDP Assessment Protocol.

An LCCDP is a systems-approach to low carbon development that aims to help cities plan, implement, monitor and account for low carbon investments and climate change mitigation actions across all sectors over time.

Four sections of the guide correspond to the stages of LCCDP development: Initiation, Planning, Execution, and Assessment/Evaluation. Case studies are provided to give additional references and sources of information where specific approaches to program elements have been taken by other cities, counties or even countries, if applicable.