Cities need to innovate to survive. Here are four ways they can do it

We are living in an ever increasingly urban world, where people continue to be drawn to cities in search of economic, social and creative opportunities.

Today, 54% of the world’s population already live in cities and with a further 3 million people per week moving to urban centres, the UN estimates that 66% of the global population will be living in cities by 2050. This trend is particularly evident in Africa and Asia, which is experiencing an unprecedented transition from predominantly rural to urban living.

If managed well, urbanization and city living can have many benefits. Cities provide an efficient way of organizing people’s lives: they enable economies of scale and network effects, and reduce the need for transportation, thereby making economic activity more environmentally friendly. The proximity and diversity of people can spark innovation and create employment as exchanging ideas breeds new ideas. The diversity of cities can also instill social tolerance and provide opportunities for civic engagement. Already today, the linkages between cities form the backbone of global trade and cities generate the majority of the world’s GDP.

However, if managed badly, cities can be left choking under the burden of pollution, congestion, sprawling slums and urban poverty. In the developed world, urban sprawl can lead to individual levels of resource consumption far exceeding those in the developing world. Urban settings also magnify global threats such as climate change, water and food security and resource shortages.

So if urbanization is set to continue, how can our cities respond? If the future of cities cannot be one of unsustainable expansion, it should rather be one of tireless innovation. Innovative solutions need to be scalable, replicable and capable of being adapted in a variety of specific urban environments. Some solutions will only be possible due to new technologies while other solutions will apply technology to ideas that are as old as the city itself.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Cities chronicled a list of Top 10 Urban Innovations from around the world, that are providing best practice examples of how cities are creating innovative solutions to a variety of urban problems.

Within these innovations, four principles surface again and again. They can be seen as a core framework to find innovative solutions to complex urban problems:

Cities are expected to provide a better standard of living, increase community cohesion, wellness and happiness while progressing towards sustainable development. To be successful in meeting these requirements, cities need to transform their strategies to include innovation and enable the convergence of the digital and physical dimensions. Cities need to support the design and development of cutting-edge solutions and processes in collaboration with the private sector, scientific research institutions, academia, citizens and start-ups, to maintain the competitive edge, while progressing towards better performance and urban service deliveries.