Best-Practice Guidelines for municipalities
Many cities invest great efforts in order increase knowledge and awareness about and to decrease air pollution itself. There are a wide range of options, some of which are rather technical, some economic incentives and others promote sustainable transport. What measure is good and appropriate for one city doesn’t necessarily have to be for another. City’s have to select the measures that they deem the best match for their problem.
There is an intensive exchange between cities, NGOs and other stakeholders on lessons learned, problems, and opportunities on the various measures.
Within the Clean Air project and the Soot free for the Climate campaign, NGOs have increased their efforts in promoting the uptake of measures for cleaner air. Besides being prominently active in shaping the public discussion on air quality, they also participate as stakeholders in this information exchange.
The lessons learned from this city ranking as well as in discussions are also channelled into these guidelines. These guidelines are short papers that sum up aspects on a certain measure. They give and overview of interesting examples and highlight important issues to tackle when choosing a certain measure.

Low Emission Zones
Setting Limits for vehicles entering the inner city, thereby banning high emitting vehicles.
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Parking Management
Using parking fees to attribute costs to entering a city, thereby controlling car inflow and promoting other cost-friendly alternatives.
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Congestion Charge
Congestion Charging Zones set prices for entering a certain zone, usually the inner city. Thereby they decrease congestion and thus also air pollution.
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Budget-friendly cycling promotion
Investing in cycling is a very cost-effective way to promote sustainable transport and it is a good option for many cities.
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Cargo Bikes
Using car bikes for many transport duties in inner cities is a good way to eliminate emission sources and to save money.
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Construction Machinery
Construction machines are sources of fine particles and need to be retrofitted with filters.
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Public transport
Cities with public transport are less dependent on cars. Promotion of public transport is thus important for air quality.
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Passenger Ships
In some cities, ships are used as local transportation means. These ships operate mostly with diesel engines and without filters. They need to be retrofitted as well.
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Bus retrofit
Buses need to be retrofitted with filters in order to prevent them from having a very negative effect on air quality.
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High Emitters
There are initiatives to ban high emitters from local emission hot spots. These bans are covered here.
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