'Vision for cities' programme

According to the policy programme, key drivers for global city growth and place shaping include:  Progressive urbanisation has already resulted in over half the world’s population now living in cities. Linked to technological, informational and economic shifts worldwide, very large cities of the future will be the principal location for human habitation, in-migration, social and economic reproduction and work.  The technological and information revolution of the 1980s and 1990s has given major, mature and emerging cities a critical role as a concentration of the people, knowledge and talent required to support the development of the global economy. Many cities are also extending outwards to form large functionally interconnected urban regions (recently referred to as global ‘mega-city regions’) that stretch beyond the metropolitan boundaries of the city.

These very large city regions generate high volumes of cross-cutting commuting and business travel not currently supported by sufficient rail and sustainable transport infrastructures and investment. They present a major challenge for strategic planning across local and political boundaries.

Following this, there are a number of steps policy makers can take to encourage the effective delivery of the infrastructure: 

Developing and attracting sufficient built environment expertise to plan and deliver the infrastructure through a thriving community of built environment professionals.

The costs of planning and delivering infrastructure, which should be benchmarked against competitor cities to lower the infrastructure delivery costs.

The funding and financing for new and retrofitted infrastructure, which includes developer tariffs and PFIs/PPPs.