Issue 5: 2014 World Cities Summit

This special issue of URBAN SOLUTIONS focuses on the WORLD CITIES SUMMIT in June 2014 and its theme “Liveable and Sustainable Cities: Common Challenges, Shared Solutions”. We explore major challenges that today’s cities face, and proven solutions from around the world. We also ask how the public, private and people sectors, as well as different cities, can learn from and collaborate with each other.

In our Interview with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the Opening Ceremony Guest of Honour, learn what liveability means personally to him, and what he thinks Singapore can learn from others. In another Interview, UK Minister of State for Cities and the Constitution and Summit plenary speaker Greg Clark calls for cities to “lead from the front”, and explains how Britain is pioneering “City Deals” to enable this.

A highlight of the Summit is the LEE KUAN YEW WORLD CITY PRIZE, and our City Focus section spotlights this year’s laureate, the beautiful city of Suzhou. The two Special Mention cities – Yokohama and Medellín – are also profiled in our Case Study section, alongside Singapore studies that showcase collaboration within and across the public and people sectors.

An Essay by Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) researchers, analysing how cities overcome their challenges to achieve advances in liveability, is adapted from their chapter in a new book on the CLC Liveability Framework that we will launch at the Summit. Elsewhere, plenary speaker Jeremy Bentham draws on Shell’s research with CLC and others to advocate resource-efficient compact cities, and how dynamic governance can enable their development. In another Essay, Peter Lacy and Ynse de Boer reveal urgent findings from the UN Global Director Compact-Accenture CEO Study on Sustainability, and propose a seven-step roadmap for effective action.

Finally, our Opinion section interrogates the Summit’s theme of “shared solutions”. Indian urban expert Dr Isher Ahluwalia, who is a Summit speaker and a recent CLC Visiting Fellow, persuasively makes the case that it is both possible and important for cities to share and learn from each other. Eminent Singaporean sociologist Professor Chua Beng Huat then provides a provocative and necessary counterpoint – highlighting the serious, and occasionally comic, limits to such sharing.

Whatever your geographical, organisational or ideological background, we welcome all of you in the business of urban planning, development and governance to join us – at the WORLD CITIES SUMMIT or here in URBAN SOLUTIONS – as we learn from, and inspire, each other to keep doing better.

Khoo Teng Chye
Executive Director
Centre for Liveable Cities