Future city making: Embracing complexity

In our latest insights paper, Future City Making, we:

• Outline current factors driving change in cities.
• Highlight complexities that can be used as growth opportunities.
• Demonstrate value through case studies.

Cities have always been at the forefront of change in society, constantly adapting to changing economic, political and environmental circumstances. These changes can present complex challenges and in recent years, the rate, pace and scale of these is greater than ever before.

To holistically understand and manage urban transformation, we need to analyze how values are agreed and created, how transformation is financed, and what relationships are fostered to co-shape it. As city agents, we have the power to deliver outcomes to help cities tackle a complex world and unlock hidden total value for all.

Taking a place-based approach and partnering with communities to co-design and oversee the projects being built in their places creates an opportunity to capture this total value.

City agents have the power to deliver outcomes which will help them tackle a complex world and unlock hidden total value.

Embracing complexity to unlock value

This paper recommends four ways in which urban change agents could approach challenges they are facing.

1. Place - Creating Total Value and capturing it in a place-based approach - Shifting from a project-based to place-based approach where interventions are holistic and tailored to specific contexts in order to generate Total Value.
2. Finance - Rethinking finance and investment to deliver socially inclusive, sustainable growth - Creating investable opportunities to attract private investment at scale.
3. Integration - Transforming project scopes and lifecycles - Embracing change by taking an adaptive and multi-disciplinary approach.
4. Stakeholders - Forming proactive partnerships for a just and equitable transition - Achieving transformative outcomes at scale through collective place leadership.