Leading change in your city

A survey of 155 European cities1 revealed human capacity constrained innovative responses to local challenges more than finances. Considering a future with more and bigger cities, investing in skills to better manage urban regions is increasingly relevant. Peter Griffiths interviews LSE's Philipp Rode and Savvas Verdis on how new forms of research and executive education are central to plugging capacity needs in cities. 

An Urban Age

In 2005 a start-up began to investigate the future of cities. Philipp Rode, now Executive Director of LSE Cities and Urban Age, recalls the challenge of convincing people of the need to understand cities ahead of the marketing salvo that followed years later when the world officially tipped into the urban age.

“I remember travelling to many different places and sitting down with practitioners and academics, but we were unknown. LSE Cities and the Urban Age is now recognisable and we don’t have to explain why cities matter,” says Rode.

Today, the maturity of research programmes like the Urban Age and the growth of new city networks clearly motivate for educating a new generation of urban leaders. The London School of Economics has in some ways been ahead of the curve – teaching graduates the multidisciplinary Cities Programme since 1999. While important, Rode suggests this isn’t immediate enough to plug today’s capacity needs.

“Executive education provides an opportunity to speak to an audience that can use research on a daily basis already. The participants2 allow us to consider how research is linked to capacity building in jobs people already have.”

Savvas Verdis, Co-Founder of the LSE’s new Executive MSc in Cities agrees: “What is being discussed one week in London is being used the next in the running of organisations. Quite a few of the participants are leading portfolios for their cities, including energy, housing, transport… They are in charge of strategy and delivery.”

The Executive MSc was launched in 2016 as an 18-month part-time programme for urban professionals wanting to understand and deliver change in their cities. The first two cohorts include deputy mayors, national leaders, and representation from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Asian Development Bank, UN-Habitat and C40 Cities.

Some of these organisations, and others like 100 Resilient Cities and the World Bank have not only provided input on real-world challenges, but have benefited from new solutions. 

“International organisations have helped us create challenges that some of their member cities or states are facing. This is refreshed every year and our participants are asked to help solve some of these challenges and organisations have been very receptive,” says Verdis. 

While the course benefits from global urban leaders and experts open to engaging through the Urban Age network, Rode never expected an executive network to come to life so rapidly.

“Creating the vehicle not only allowed us to create relationships with participants, but with all the invited speakers and guest lecturers. Even guests have received input they wouldn’t be able to get through paid consultancies or from their staff,” says Rode. 

Francis De-Wolf, Partner at BRUT Architecture & Urban Design and current participant decided to ensure the construction of Quito’s first metro line considers benefits more broadly by encouraging the World Bank and the city to consider design in greater detail, while Annette Galskjot, CEO of the International Federation for Housing and Planning used the programme’s consultancy project to re-invent her company strategy. After graduating she appointed LSE Cities as a knowledge partner to help her organisation devise a social sustainability index for cities.

Shared learning

According to Verdis, participants are inspired by each other and eager to keep the network active.

“Come April, which is the fourth residency week in London, people are thinking: ‘What are we going to do without everyone?’” says Verdis.

Sharon Lewis, former Executive Manager of Planning and Strategy at the Johannesburg Development Agency and currently advising South Africa’s National Treasury, has set up meetups in her home city to leverage this.

“While classroom learning is very valuable, the opportunity to learn from peers is priceless. We are trying to extend our peer learning beyond the course by keeping in contact,” says Lewis

Meeting in Newtown, an inner-city area undergoing redevelopment, the intention is to deepen and share learning from the executive programme, particularly multi-disciplinary thinking and problem-solving using an evidence-based approach. Topics have included innovation in municipal finance, and understanding why imported solutions, including big public and private investments in poorer areas and the rolling out of bus rapid transit didn't achieve the anticipated impact in South Africa’s economic hub. Establishing why imported solutions don’t always work is critical if cities are to share and successfully implement best practice approaches.

Participants recently learnt how one of the world’s least urban countries, Ethiopia, has embarked on an urban and national rail strategy. Following the river system was critical given the steep topography, but establishing corridors was only part of the challenge according to Getachew Betru, former CEO of Ethiopian Railway Corporation.

“The legal and institutional framework had to be set up from scratch – the railway act, the public enterprise act, establishment of a railway company, regulatory authority… All of these things are taken for granted in the UK.”

The veteran planner believes “rail connectivity will change everything” and connecting “Addis to Dakar and to Nairobi and then on to Cape Town” will help Africa catch up with the rest of the world when it comes to industrialisation. He cautions that getting education right is key to achieving this and shares how the country is aggressively upskilling local engineering talent.

The African participants from Kampala, Kumasi, Abuja and Johannesburg, were eager to hear more, anticipating equally ambitious infrastructure projects in their own countries.

An important part of this learning exchange according to Rode is having the time to reflect in an otherwise fast-paced world. Verdis agrees:

“People are wanting to do jobs that impact change on cities but don’t have the space to think of this.”

Capacity building

Evidence of how immediate the impact of the collective expertise is that participants, as part of the course design, assisted Yangon, a city wrestling with rapid population and physical growth. Working directly with the mayor’s team, participants shared their expert knowledge on how they have been responding to challenges in their own cities.

Urban Age data analytics further supported the municipality by identifying what data exists and how it can be used to determine superior spatial outcomes for people and the environment. Officials, including the chief planner, can now compare how Myanmar’s largest city performs against other cities around the world after a team from the LSE provided local training.

“There are currently 13 former students using their own professional time to upgrade classwork to present to the Yangon city,” says Rode who believes familiarising those making decisions in Yangon with global conversations will result in more sustainable outcomes.

Starting a new city?

“You hear the voices next door? That is one of our former students talking to ten current students who are setting up the task force for Amaravati,” says Rode.

Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh is India’s newest capital city. Participants researching challenges in finance, affordable housing and sustainable transport hosted senior officials from Amaravati to share knowledge.

“A team of four officials visited London to explain the entire masterplan. After that, a group of students from LSE will come to Amaravati to do a comprehensive study on the capital,” says Cherukuri Sridha, commissioner of the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority.

Jagan Shah, Director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs, gives participants more insight into India’s urbanisation challenges. While India is building a new capital, Shah, reflecting on a McKinsey report arguing a new Chicago will need to be built every year to accommodate urban growth:

“We already have the new Chicago – it’s just not planned.”  

Now imagine you were responsible for starting this new city in India. From scratch. You could travel to China Inc to purchase an off-the-shelf-overnight-city-solution and hope for a large piece of easily developable land that isn’t contested by communities or environmental groups. Side-stepping concerns that the Asian urban miracle may not translate into different contexts and the enormous financial sustainability risks of the speculative project, a modest city able to accommodate a portion of the extra one billion urbanites needing homes by 2030 rises.

It thrives. Then more people arrive than planned. The glittering skyline is rubbed out by smog and residents complain more time is spent in traffic than at work. Solutions prove tricky as the talented people required to manage the complexity of city life are in short supply.

But what about this Chinese model?

“It’s not tenable in India’s political economy. I don’t think many people want it as India tends to get all the poor-quality Chinese products dumped in their cities,” says Shah. 

In most instances cities, and the complex challenges of managing the largest infrastructure mankind has ever built, already exist3.

You’re teaching people to understand the city?

“That sounds very simple, but there are a lot of programmes that aren’t asking that question. They’re going straight to how to make this transport system work more efficiently. We’re including that question but always stepping backwards on wider outcomes,” says Verdis. 

____________________

[1] Representing a quarter of all cities with over 100,000 residents

[2] Some participants have over 40 years’ experience; calling them students seemed inappropriate.

[3] There are over 4,000 cities globally.