From the bustling streets of Babylonia to the soaring skyscrapers of New York, from the intellectual hubs of Alexandria to the megacities of Shanghai, cities have always been engines of innovation, economic activity, and social transformation. They are also deeply political creations—rising or declining depending on how well societies anticipate, respond to, and manage change. Today, urban administrations face a 21st-century version of an age-old question: how can cities make decisions that remain viable for the future?
This question has taken on unprecedented urgency. Rapid urbanization, technological disruption, fiscal constraints, climate risks, and widening social inequality are converging in ways that challenge traditional approaches to planning and governance. Every urban development project is confronted with two unavoidable queries: How much will it cost? And what benefits will it bring? Yet, as urbanist and systems thinker Ian Banerjee emphasizes, these questions cannot be answered solely through short-term financial logic.
In his upcoming lecture, alongside with Edna dos Santos (former UNCTAD Creative Economy Programmeoriginator and its Chief) and J Scott Younger, OBE (International Rector of the President University), Banerjee frames cities as dynamic, interdependent systems rather than as a collection of isolated projects. Urban development, in this view, is a complex interplay of economic constraints, social outcomes, institutional capacity, and long-term resilience. Costs and benefits do not unfold evenly across time, social groups, or spatial scales. What appears efficient in the short run may generate fragility in the long term, while modest, carefully targeted interventions can produce disproportionate systemic gains.
Banerjee’s key research interest during the last 25 years was to identify theinfrastructural and institutional preconditions that have proven to be necessary for cities to increase their capacity to solve problems, to learn continuously and to generate continuous flow of ideas and innovations for the future.
Central to Banerjee’s argument is the need to integrate innovation with social realities. Particularly in rapidly urbanizing regions of the Global South, urban development must balance limited budgets with technological solutions that are frugal, context-sensitive, and socially embedded. Employment creation—especially for youth—social inclusion, and security are not peripheral concerns but critical components of resilient urban systems. Governance, he argues, should focus on enabling conditions for adaptation and learning rather than attempting rigid control. Cities, in this view, are living systems capable of evolving when nurtured thoughtfully.
The stakes in the Global South are particularly high. By 2050, it is projected that nearly two-thirds of the world’s urban population will live in cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These regions are urbanizing faster than infrastructure, services, and governance capacity can keep pace. Informal settlements, peripheral suburbs, and sprawling urban peripheries often grow faster than regulatory frameworks can accommodate, leaving populations vulnerable to poverty, unemployment, and insecurity. At the same time, these same cities represent extraordinary opportunity: hubs of innovation, entrepreneurship, and cultural dynamism capable of reshaping economic and social futures.
It is within this context that the Global Academy for Future Governance (GAFG)along with its consortium of international partners (such as Modern Diplomacy) has stepped forward to convene policymakers, practitioners, and scholars in its forthcoming half-day public event dedicated to the systemic challenges of urbanization. The Academy’s mandate—to foster anticipatory governance, systems leadership, and long-term resilience—directly addresses the pressing need for holistic approaches to urban development. By providing a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue, the event seeks to bridge the gap between urban theory and practical policy interventions, particularly in the Global South where challenges are most acute and immediate.
The event is designed for decision-makers and stakeholders whose coordinated action is critical to shaping resilient cities. Government officials in finance, economic development, construction, technology, security, health, social and family affairs, and immigrant integration, metropolitan and regionalauthorities, as well as private-sector actors including businesses, developers, insurers, and transport operators, are all integral to this conversation. GAFG recognizes that no single actor can navigate the complexity of urbanization alone; systemic solutions demand collaboration across sectors and disciplines.
Banerjee’s lecture at the event emphasizes that rapid urbanization cannot be treated as a purely technical or financial problem. It is fundamentally interdisciplinary, requiring insights from economics, social policy, urban design, public health, technology, and governance. For example, attempts to improve public transport in rapidly growing suburbs will falter if they fail to account for employment patterns, informal economies, or security concerns.
Similarly, digital innovations designed to optimize city services must be aligned with local capacity, budgetary constraints, and social inclusion goals. Systems thinking provides a framework for integrating these considerations, allowing decision-makers to anticipate unintended consequences and leverage synergies.
A particularly urgent issue highlighted by Banerjee is youth unemployment. Cities in the Global South are growing predominantly through young populations, many of whom enter urban labour markets without adequate education, training, or access to opportunity. Failure to integrate employment creation into urban planning exacerbates inequality and can intensify insecurity, social unrest, and informal settlement growth. Yet, as Banerjee notes, strategically targeted interventions—such as skills hubs, micro-enterprise support, and incremental infrastructure investments—can generate cascading benefits that strengthen social cohesion and economic resilience.
The lecture also stresses the importance of frugal innovation. High-tech solutions imported wholesale from the Global North often fail to account for the unique economic, social, and institutional realities of urban Global South. Instead, innovation must be context-sensitive, scalable, and socially embedded. Examples include modular housing, locally managed digital platforms, renewable energy microgrids, and community-led planning initiatives. Each of these approaches illustrates how systems thinking transforms urban development from a series of projects into a coherent, adaptive strategy that balances cost, benefit, and social impact.
Ultimately, Banerjee reframes urban governance as an act of stewardship. Rather than seeking control over every variable, city administrations can cultivate conditions for adaptability, learning, and resilience. This requires long-term thinking, cross-sector collaboration, and continuous feedback loops between policy, practice, and local communities. Urban systems that embrace this approach are more likely to withstand shocks, whether economic, social, or environmental, and to deliver inclusive, sustainable outcomes over time.
The Global Academy for Future Governance, through its half-day event, embodies this philosophy by bringing together a diverse group of actors to explore solutions in a systemic, interdisciplinary way. Participants are invited to engage with questions such as: How can technology and innovation be optimized to serve urban populations under budgetary constraints? How can employment, security, and social inclusion be addressed simultaneously in informal settlements and expanding suburbs? And how can urban policy anticipate long-term challenges rather than merely reacting to immediate pressures?
By positioning these questions at the heart of public discourse, GAFG and thought leaders like Ian Banerjee are advancing a vision of cities as living, learning systems. This perspective is particularly vital for the Global South, where rapid urbanization presents both unprecedented risks and extraordinary opportunities.
Ever since the Industrial revolution, the urbanisation was a rapid trend. However, over the past two decades the world has urbanised exponentially: globally the share of people living in urban areas rose from roughly 47 % in 2000 to about 56 % by 2020, and is projected to reach around 68 % by 2050, with rural shares declining accordingly. In OECD countries, already highly urbanised, urbanisation increased from approximately 39 % in 2000to about49 % in 2020, and is expected to hit85–86 % by mid-century, as rural populations shrink and city living becomes dominant. In contrast, the Global South — where most population growth now occurs — had a much lower urban share in 2000 but saw sharp increases by 2020 (often moving from majority rural to majority urban in many regions), and will continue rapid urban expansion such that a growing majority of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will live in cities by 2050, driving most of the world’s urban growth. This global shift reflects broader economic and social transformations, with faster urban growth in developing regions shaping new opportunities and challenges for infrastructure, services, and sustainability.
The challenge is never merely to build infrastructure, but to design cities that are adaptive, equitable, and capable of fostering innovation while supporting social cohesion, mitigating exposures and reducing the tangible and intangible costs – something so close to the core mandate of GAFG.
In the end, the future of urban development depends not on short-term calculations or single-sector solutions, but on a holistic understanding of cities as interdependent, evolving systems. By integrating economic, social, technological, and environmental perspectives, policymakers and urban practitioners can make decisions that are robust under uncertainty, inclusive in their outcomes, and transformative in their impact. Events like GAFG’s half-day public forum, combined with the insights of systems thinkers like Banerjee, dos Santos, and Younger, offer a path toward urban governance that is truly future-ready—where costs, innovation, and social change are understood not in isolation, but as part of a living, adaptive whole.
Annelie Marchestainer Austria-Australia-based Social Pedagogy specialist and the former European Youth Parliament (EYP) member.
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