Project Auckland: The world of cities and infrastructure, post-pandemic

Professor Greg Clark. Photo / Supplied

Covid-19 has been a short-term shock, with longer-term consequences. It has led to a debate about the future of cities and the infrastructures needed to serve them. Each nation brings a different narrative to these issues. What is the rest of the world thinking, and what can New Zealand glean?

The Magic of Cities

What makes a city is people’s concentration. The proximity between people induces deep interactions that create “network effects”. Thus, cities accelerate ideas, foster participation, and drive fusion.

The scale of population, activities, and revenues also supports common services and infrastructures and drives specialisation in medicine, science, art, sport, media, leisure, and business. Thus, cities can enhance social mobility, increase productivity, deepen civic capital, and spur creativity.

The magic of cities is that they magnify and multiply those interactions with this “concentration super-power”.

The Planet of Cities

Cities play a special role in the future of our planet. By 2080 almost 10 billion people will be living in 10,000 cities.

As the concentration of people, jobs, infrastructure, systems, and consumption intensify they emit carbon. At the same time, cities are the most obvious victims of rising temperatures and sea levels that make them prone to poor air quality, flooding, extreme heat and weather, and natural disasters that threaten human health, biodiversity, fixed assets, and ecosystems.

Cities are also the places where urban innovations shape choices, nudge behaviour changes, and foster new models of investment, consumption, and circularity, as they pursue the path to net zero. Cities are the pioneers of climate reform.

The Century of Cities

In the 5th decade of our urban century, new resources have arrived.

The toolbox of city management, public governance, and progressive policy is now joined by three new resources in the quest for good urbanisation.

The first is a new suite of exponential and enabling technologies that drive new urban sectors, enhance city systems, and make city management a common task between businesses, government, and citizens.

The second is a private investment that has woken up to the scale of the urban opportunity and the existential imperative to make cities work.

The third is the new art of place leadership, which integrates otherwise separated and fragmented inputs into “virtual governance” premised on the imperatives of a place rather than sectors, institutions, or political parties. Place leadership builds new forms of social capital and identity through deep participation.

Taken together, these three new tools can augment our urban leadership, and drive connected places that increase both the investment rate and the level of trust in our cities.

· Greg Clark is a world expert on cities, urban investment, and sustainable urban transition.