Increasing importance of cities

Foresight

Cities are estimated to generate 80% of all economic growth.
OECD studies showed that, for each doubling of population size, the productivity level of a city increases by 2-5% as a result of better labour distribution, education, entrepreneurship, spread of ideas, etc.
The organisations of mayors now represent an emergent global governance power and platforms for addressing the most important challenges – e.g. the C40 networks.
In the last two decades, cities ambition has risen remarkably to go beyond the national governments’ climate-change targets: for example, the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C warns that current nationally determined contributions for the Paris Agreement are not sufficient.

Originally Published \| Last Updated	02 Oct 2018 \| 03 Jul 2020
Knowledge service \| Metadata	Foresight \| The Megatrends Hub \| Continuing urbanisation
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