ABSTRACT
There is both scientific basis and social expediency in making urgent and wholesale global changes in the way humanity conducts itself. Having entered the Anthropocene epoch and experienced the immediate impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, population explosion, mass urbanisation, global pandemic, uncontrollable pollution, ecosystem collapse and climate emergency, the world is at a tipping point and yet national governments are seemingly unable to adequately address the difficult challenges and make collective decisions at the scales and speeds required. A “great reset” is, however, necessarily arriving, yet it will be led by the cities rather than nation states, through their ability to react faster, adapt more efficiently, and communicate more closely with their citizens to address their changing needs. Cities that take urgent and radical action, embracing significant adaptation as essential in addressing their longer-term future through building more balanced, resilient, and human-centric environments, will become global leaders in a near and different future, whilst others will delay at their peril.
