A Data-Driven Approach to Tackling Grand Challenges and Building Sustainable, Resilient Communities.
Cities face a multitude of challenges, yet within this complexity lies the potential for remarkable transformation. The book explores how place leaders — mayors, urban visionaries, and catalysts — can harness data and citizen science to build the cities we actually want to live in.
Between data and dreams, we find the courage to reimagine our cities — and ourselves.
The Future of Cities explores how place leaders armed with data-driven decision-making and citizen science can tackle the grand challenges of our time — sustainability, health, education, security, and poverty.
By examining real-world examples and rigorous data analysis, the book reveals how data-driven leadership equips cities to implement effective solutions that serve local communities. It empowers leaders with actionable steps to build a more sustainable, equitable, and thriving future for all.
To tackle challenges linked to sustainability, water, the environment, public transportation, health, education, poverty and safety.
For building equitable, resilient cities — drawn from European urban contexts and global comparisons.
To ignite collaboration and collective intelligence in urban planning — turning residents from subjects of policy into co-authors of it.
Embrace the potential. Transform your city.
Order The Future of Cities from your regional Amazon store. Hardcover and Kindle editions available.
The book draws on the principle that intentional collaboration — between data, leaders, and citizens — is what unlocks transformation in cities. The Forbes feature situates this thinking within a broader leadership conversation about how positive change actually scales.
The book was presented at a dedicated session at the European Parliament — a discussion among MEPs, EU institutional leaders, and policy heads on the future of urban cities and the data-driven approaches that can shape them.
The session was hosted by Gabriella Gerzsenyi MEP, Vice-Chair of the REGI Committee, and opened by Jan Olbrycht, former EPP Group MEP and Chairman of the former Urban Intergroup.
Following the book presentation, a panel discussion brought together MEPs, EU institutional leaders, and policy heads from across the urban policy landscape — including representatives from the European Commission's DG REGIO, the EPP Group, Eurocities, and the EPP Committee of Regions Group.
The conversation centred on the future of European urban cities — and on the data-driven, evidence-based approaches that can shape how they develop in the decade ahead.
A moment from the European Parliament book presentation — captured live during the session.
The future belongs to the cities that can adapt. The book is a guide for how to build that capacity — structurally, intelligently, and at the scale of human life.
From rethinking urban responses to global challenges, through the European urban landscape, all the way to innovation and impact. Each chapter builds the next.
The book is the foundation. Everything else — the framework, the courses, the tools — extends from it. Here's where to go next.
The diagnostic framework that emerged from the book — six pillars, 150 indicators, mapped across European cities.
Two structured courses — free and paid — that turn the book's argument into hands-on practice.
Peer-reviewed articles, policy briefs, and reports — the underlying evidence base the book draws on.
Structured learning programmes for policymakers, researchers, corporate leaders, and university teams.
Including the hand-painted cover artwork — and the broader visual practice that runs alongside the research.
For book signings, speaking engagements, partnerships, or research collaborations.