Explaining patterns of city sustainability

City Clusters

Explaining patterns
of city sustainability

City Clusters

Why is one city more sustainable than another? Is it because of physical attributes such as a safe, resilient location or as a result of far-sighted investment in green space? Is it the result of long periods of investment in health, education and transport infrastructure, or the impact of more recent actions taken to mitigate the impacts of unfettered growth? Most importantly, how do these drivers relate to citizen needs, both now and in the future? When comparing cities at opposite ends of the spectrum, these differences appear easy to spot, often in the levels of health and education infrastructure and the levels of meaningful employment, but as one compares peer cities, the differences are harder to discern.

To provide greater insight into the factors that influence city development and performance, we have developed a deeper understanding of howcitizens and cities relate.

This insight is derived from city archetypes based on urban ethnographic research into how cities are evolving and the experience of the citizens living within them. The results of this research is a set of four city clusters.

Our starting point for developing the clusters is that all cities are composites of different citizen experiences. Elements of a fast-growing city where citizen needs are met in part through an informal economy can be found alongside aspects of the most advanced, smart city technologies, where services and infrastructure are integrated using data and digital platforms. These experiences of a city, whether Informal or Sensing for example, help to connect the citizen to the city.

Our research has focused on eight archetypes that highlight how cities are experienced by citizens. A single archetype is not intended to describe a city. In each city, the archetypes combine to define the character of a city clusters. More detail about the archetypes can be found in the Appendix.