Show Notes
In 2018, Cape Town came within months of Day Zero; the potential of running out of water. What followed was one of the most remarkable collective responses to an urban crisis: water use was cut by almost half, the taps stayed on, and the experience permanently changed how the City thinks about risk, trust and preparedness. It turned Cape Town into a city with Futures-Thinking at its core.
In our latest WRLDCTY Podcast, Gareth Morgan, Executive Director of Future Planning and Resilience, takes us from that crisis into a much bigger conversation about the capabilities cities need for an increasingly unpredictable era.
Climate is only part of the story. So are population growth, migration, geopolitical shocks, infrastructure, AI and the ability of institutions to learn quickly enough to respond.
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Few downtowns have had their post-pandemic struggles examined as closely — or declared dead as confidently — as San Francisco. The city was particularly exposed to the structural changes reshaping downtowns everywhere: remote and hybrid work, high office vacancy, declining transit ridership, housing affordability, public safety and visible vulnerability on the street. Now, San Francisco is doubling down on its comeback. In this episode, we hear from Shola Olatoye, CEO, San Francisco Downtown Development Corp about the big bets, private sector and philanthropic engagement and where results are being seen.
Every year, more than 70,000 people gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert to build a city from nothing. Roads are laid out. Neighborhoods emerge. Public spaces come alive. Art rises from the dust (and rain). People cook, teach, perform, care for one another, and create the culture of the city itself.
In this episode of the WRLDCTY Podcast, we explore Tokyo through the work of PYNT, Nikken Sekkei's collective innovation platform - a social space where designers, researchers, and community builders are experimenting with new ways of bringing people together and rethinking the city. To do so, we are honoured to welcome Junko Iwaya and Yuki Tatano of Nikken Sekkei.
In this episode, we sit down with Paul van Zyl, co-founder and CEO of The Conduit: a purpose-driven members' community bringing together leaders tackling the world's biggest challenges. Together, we explore how cities create the conditions for collaboration, why physical gathering spaces matter more than ever, and how London continues to reinvent itself through bold leadership on air quality, climate, AI, and culture.
In this episode, we hear from longtime WRLDCTY friend and Global Fellow Emiliano Espasandin about the "perfectly imperfect" nature of Buenos Aires, a city with a sidewalk-level culture of cafes, retail, food, dance, and community that shows how powerful a city's intangibles can be. In Emiliano's words, the lack of "asking permission" and the belief that anything is possible is what makes Buenos Aires a city we can all learn from in this era of social isolation in cities around the world.