About Us

Sustainable Cities International was founded in Canada in 1993 as a partnership between three levels of government, the private sector and civil society organizations. We are governed by a board of directors from the private, public and civil sectors. It has a core staff based in Vancouver, and an international panel of advisors, partner organizations, and associates in other cities.

Our Mission

Sustainable Cities International's mission is to catalyze action on urban sustainability in cities around the world.

Our Approach

CO-CREATING FOR URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

sustainability + design thinking + stakeholder engagement

sustainability:

Municipal governments around world have made a formal commitment to move their operations and their cities towards more sustainable futures – futures that maximize the social, environmental and economic well being of their citizens. Faced with increasingly complex problems such as reducing carbon emissions, lowering rates of crime, poverty and homelessness and more recently with the challenges of rapid urbanization and ageing populations, cities have rooted their policy frameworks in the concept and values of sustainable development.

Municipalities are also faced with the growing need to do ‘more with less’ as they struggle to fund basic infrastructure and services while continuing to deliver value to their citizens.

design thinking – the key to innovation:

Solving these complex challenges requires a new approach to leadership in municipalities; an approach that enables leaders to recognize where stability and certainty are appropriate (such as maintaining a clean and safe water supply) while introducing innovation, when new thinking, new ideas and new solutions are required (such as integrated solutions to energy security, carbon emissions, and economic marginalization).

Finding this balance between innovation and stability is the key to successfully renewing our cities to face the challenges of the 21st century. Each city will reach this balance in different ways.

Design thinking is an approach used to build personal and organizational capacity for innovation. It is a way of thinking that we all do in our daily lives as we seek to find solutions to problems that require us to integrate information from many disciplines – the arts and the sciences and to apply this new knowledge to meet our needs and to enrich our lives.

In professional circles design thinking is applied to four arenas: visual communications such as graphic design; objects such as tools and machinery and vehicles; activities and services such as strategic planning for public service delivery and; the design of complex environments for living, working playing and learning – our buildings, neighborhoods and cities.

Design thinking is an intensely human centered approach to innovation. In design thinking, the innovation of a product, a service, an organization, a building or a city are done with people not for them. Stakeholder engagement then becomes an integral aspect of innovation. It is integral to producing a better product, service, organization or city.

Stakeholder engagement:

Most municipalities have made a commitment to engaging their citizenry on topics that affect their daily lives. In some circumstances, stakeholder engagement is a regulatory requirement for certain activities such as land use planning. Stakeholder and citizen engagement is often seen as an extension of the democratic responsibilities of municipalities – the closest level of government to the people.

However, as we embrace design thinking, we can look at stakeholder engagement as much more. It becomes critical to engage in order to understand complex issues and to generate innovative and robust solutions that have a likelihood of succeeding.

In the political environment of local government, stakeholder engagement is also necessary to ensure ongoing support for initiatives. Engaged stakeholders will provide a ‘constituency of support’ for new ideas and policy directions. This is of particular importance when a policy is likely to unfold over a long period of time – past the often short term mandate of local politics – or when the proposed change is very different from previous policy direction.