EVALUATING CLIMATE-RESILIENT URBAN PLANNING SOLUTIONS FOR NUKUS (KARAKALPAKSTAN, UZBEKISTAN)

Abstract

Nukus, the administrative center of Karakalpakstan, faces a set of urban-development constraints that are unusual in scale for a mid-sized city: chronic water stress, increasing heat exposure, and recurrent sand and dust storms associated with the Southern Aral Sea crisis. This paper proposes a compact, evidence-based evaluation approach to compare urban-planning measures under these conditions. Using publicly available climate summaries and internationally recognized indicator definitions, we develop a small set of planning indicators covering mobility access, dust and heat shelter, water resilience and implementation readiness, and we demonstrate a scenario-based comparison of three intervention packages (mobility-focused, green-infrastructure-focused and integrated). Results suggest that an integrated package is most robust because it couples transport improvements (including fleet modernization) with salt- and drought-tolerant green infrastructure and water-sensitive public space standards. The novelty of the work is the explicit translation of regional environmental stressors into a transparent municipal scorecard that can be updated as the Nukus Green City Action Plan and related programs mature.