When 1,000 mayors, policymakers, innovators, and creatives came together in Madrid last month for Bloomberg CityLab, they demonstrated the power and promise of urban connections in a time when national and global alliances are fraying. But more than that, they also surfaced breakthrough solutions and spotlighted a shift in how cities are putting those ideas into action: moving from adopting new technologies to shaping them, from engaging residents to partnering with them, and from delivering results behind the scenes to showing their work in real time.
As James Anderson, who leads the Government Innovation program at Bloomberg Philanthropies explained in Madrid, “Elected officials have to show their work in new and different ways today to close the gap between city hall and the street—to make their government more legible to people in their everyday lives.”
From getting ahead of the next wave of AI transformations to taking meaningful action in the face of climate change, housing, transportation, and more, here are some of the standout moments and conversations from this year’s preeminent global cities summit that point to the future of governing in cities.