City Planning Labs (CPL)

City Planning Labs: Building Foundations for Smarter Cities

City Planning Labs (CPL) is a Technical Assistance program of the World Bank, which aims to enhance the technical and institutional capacity of municipal governments to produce, share, and utilize geospatial data for evidence-led urban planning.

CPL is grateful for the catalytic support of: the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) through the Indonesia Sustainable Urbanization Trust Fund (IDSUN MDTF); the World Bank Korea Green Growth Trust Fund; and the Global Data Innovation Fund through the World Bank Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building.

Our Mission

The last decade has witnessed an urban data revolution, as cities globally have started mobilising geo-spatial data to harness the potential of urbanization. Indonesian cities have joined this revolution, leveraging data and planning to overcome constrains to build smarter, sustainable and climate resilient cities. To support Indonesian cities in this endeavour, the World Bank is providing support to the Government of Indonesia (GOI) through its City Planning Labs (CPL) Technical Assistance Initiative.

CPL's mission is to strengthen local governments’ data foundation and leverage digital intelligences within existing urban systems to strengthen evidence-driven planning for creating liveable cities for all residents.

Our Approach

CPL helps cities by developing scalable and replicable tools that turn data into information, while supporting the establishment of data governance systems to mainstream evidence-driven spatial planning. It does so through the operationalization of a comprehensive Municipal Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) framework.

To operationalize MSDI, CPL has developed a government-led, collaborative process of assessments, roadmaps and agile tools using CPL’s four-pillar IPDS framework:

Institutions (local regulations and data governance protocols),
People (competency frameworks and skill development),
Data (collection, processing, management and utilization and data driven tools), and
Systems (Integrated Data Platform).

CPL’s MSDI Manual facilitates the assessments to identify specific opportunities for short and medium term. Once the opportunities are identified, the city can utilize practical, replicable, and scalable tools for each of the four pillars to create quick wins.

Our Tools

CPL has developed agile and adaptable Urban Planning Tools which empower cities to take charge of their digital development processes and improve the quality of life of their residents.

CPL interventions carefully build on global good practices, keeping city governments in mind, and can be tailored to the country context but with a vision towards scalability.