EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Cities of the future

Cities of the future - global competition, local leadership

Introduction

“Cities of the future” analyses the core elements of a city’s strategic agenda. By doing so, it assists city leaders in developing a clear vision for the future development of their communities.

Description

“Cities of the future” is the first report of the City and Local Government Network. For this report, the researchers analysed what they believe to be the constituent elements of a city. Those elements form the basis for developing a strategic agenda for a city. The elements are called “capitals”.

Using these capitals as a starting point, the report examines how different cities around the world are developing their understanding of each form of capital and assessing how they can ensure that they develop the city intelligence to make the best use of the capitals they have and develop those which may be in shorter supply.

There are six different types of capital discussed in this report:

intellectual and social capital – people and knowledge;
democratic capital – participation and consultation;
cultural capital – values, behaviours and public expressions;
environmental capital – natural resources;
technical capital – man-made capital and infrastructure;
financial capital – money and asset.

The report lists for each of these “capitals” a number of key future challenges.

Background information

Many of the challenges and opportunities that are coming to define the early part of the 21st century are at their most visible in the cities in which a growing proportion of the world’s population now lives.

In response to the importance of cities in the global economy, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) established a City and Local Government Network in 2004. The Network aims to bring together city leaders so that they can share the experience, knowledge and insights that they have gained and to develop their ideas and strategies for the future.

Methodology

For this report the researcher interviewed over 40 senior figures from cities all over the world to come up with a number of common themes that all city leaders believe to be setting the agenda for their cities.

Conclusions

Managing the six capitals effectively means taking a holistic approach, since each of the capitals depends on the others.
Developing the capabilities to ensure that cities manage their capitals effectively means looking at the people, processes and property that they need to manage in order to achieve their goals.
Cities need to make sure that they can measure the performance of each of these three categories. Without effective performance management, cities will not be able to create a culture of continuous improvement.
The pace and extent of change that cities have to cope with requires them to become particularly adept at programme and project management. To do this, they need to create the right skills that can guide and support change within the organisation.

Contact info

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
publications.uk@uk.pwc.com

Publication date

20/01/2006

Researcher

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

Links

PricewaterhouseCoopers Government

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy

Keywords