The Rio+20  Summit takes place in June. Pre-conference forums and papers are being distributed widely within a variety of subject categories. The entry below is right within  PASCAL's bailiwick and especially that of Peter Kearns's new initiative on cities of sustainable opportunity  within PIE. Anyone interested in responding directly to the Rio Forum within the Stakeholders group should go to this link

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Sustainability Needs Cities

Chris Guenther, Senior Associate, SustainAbility

 It is a widely-held view that progress on sustainable development has been too slow, and not adequate relative to the scale of the challenges we face. So the ‘holy grail’, for a growing cadre of sustainability advocates, is to drive the creation and implementation of solutions with ever-greater speed and scale. But how do we do that?

 Part of the answer lies in cities. On one hand, urbanization is itself a major challenge to global sustainability, but on the other, cities are key sources for the energy and innovative capacity needed to bring sustainability to scale.

 This is the subject of a new paper, by myself and my colleague Mohammed Al-Shawaf, titled Citystates: How Cities Are Vital to the Future of Sustainability.  In it, we posit that sustainability needs cities as much as cities need sustainability – not only because they are a linchpin for the survival of our people and planet, but also a lever for shared progress and prosperity. Consequently, we argue that a greater share of sustainability effort should be focused and expended in the context of cities, in order to expand and accelerate progress on the agenda as a whole. We also hone in particularly on the role of global business, which faces ever-growing pressure to deliver social as well as financial value around the world, and which can contribute vital skills and resources to augment the effort of city governments and other stakeholders to drive urban sustainability.

 At its core, Citystates identifies seven characteristics, or states, that we see as key to advancing sustainability both within and beyond the city, and asks what business particularly can learn and/or contribute to improve their potential:

The Connected City: Both growing technological enablement and traditional social connectivity provide opportunities for greater awareness, trust and collaboration among stakeholders. How can business both bolster and create value from this essential connectivity?

The Decisive City: Cities often have the urgency, remit and accountability to act decisively – for example, on mitigation and adaptation efforts related to climate change. How might companies improve their own decisiveness, and/or leverage that of cities, to drive sustainability?

The Adaptive City: Cities are among the most adaptable structures in society. How can business both incorporate these adaptive characteristics while collaborating with cities on their mutual survival?

 The Collaborative/Competitive City: The healthy tension between peer-to-peer collaboration and economic and brand competition among cities has potential to drive precompetitive sustainable innovation and rapid diffusion of solutions. How might industries exploit this tension in their own parallel drive for sustainability and competitiveness?

The Visceral City: Urban living is shaped by numerous real and potential feedback loops. As urbanization and its impacts rise and become more visible, awareness and urgency become more acute. How can companies leverage greater engagement to drive both value creation and sustainable development?

The Personal City: The influence of shared identity and values – in cities and elsewhere – is a particularly powerful driver of individual and collective action. How can businesses effectively engage citizen-consumers’ core values in order to change behavior and drive demand for more sustainable products & services?

The Experimental City: Cities have inherent advantages to experimentation, like complimentary ecosystems for R&D and low barriers to entry for nontraditional actors. How can business embrace the growing democratization of innovation and leverage cities as laboratories to test and scale sustainability solutions?

In the end, we do not suggest that either the sustainability of cities or cities’ positive influence on sustainability will be easy or certain. Rather, we suggest the possibility of a mutually beneficial relationship, and that, through focus and effort, we may begin to take advantage of it. The purpose of Citystates is to seed a dialogue, the central question of which is: how might business and others come together to strengthen and leverage the unique characteristics and advantages of cities to accelerate progress on sustainability? 

We will continue to explore this topic throughout the year, including at an event to coincide with the Rio+20 summit in Rio de Janeiro in June. We look forward to continuing the conversation there and elsewhere, and hope you will join us. For more information, please contact

 [email protected] or [email protected]