Enabling sustainable city competitiveness through distributed urban leadership
Leadership lies at the heart of enabling and delivering sustainable urban competitiveness. It is also critical to place-based strategy development and implementation. As the challenges facing cities in the 21st century magnify, the role and importance of urban leaders can hardly be underestimated nor can the need for a more inclusive approach to those who can help make change happen in a place – lead firms, knowledge institutes and engaged citizens.
The report entitled ‘Enabling sustainable city competitiveness through distributed urban leadership’ focuses on the evolving challenges of urban leadership in the 21st century and contains ten case studies from Amaravati, Coimbra, Detroit, Dubai, Dublin, Manchester, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Stockholm and the Randstad region in the Netherlands.
Key findings
- The changing context for urban development requires a new form of distributed urban leadership extending beyond the public sector
- It involves a wider range of actors beyond local government - lead firms, knowledge institutes and civic movements - and on creating the space in these organisations to be involved in local community affairs
- The new urban (public) leader therefore needs new skills to: frame problems in new ways in the context of the city’s DNA; lead in the ‘in-between’ places; and become institutional entrepreneurs
- A public leader’s network, the recognised legitimacy to lead by their peers and a tacit understanding of the city’s context cannot be built overnight
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