WRLDCTY CONNECTIONS STAGE
Join a global community of urban leaders pushing boundaries, challenging convention, and reimagining how cities are built and experienced. Expect fresh perspectives, meaningful dialogue, and conversations that shape what’s next for our collective urban future.
Mon. June 15
8:15 - 9:00 AM
Networking Breakfast
9:00 - 11:00 AM
WCS Opening Plenary
11:15 - 11:20 AM
Opening of WRLDCTY Connections Stage
MC, Jasmine Palardy
Introduction to the WRLDCTY Connections Stage – outline of WRLDCTY and background. Overview of what experiences delegates will have over the coming days.
11:20am – 12:00pm
The Creative Bureaucracy & its Radical Common Sense
Charles Landry
Moderator: Anupam Yog, Founder and Director, weareMIXD
Over the past decade, the Creative Bureaucracy idea has moved from a provocative oxymoron to an acknowledged practice and increasingly from the margins to the mainstream. The Creative Bureaucracy Festival has been at the heart of this journey. What began as a space to rethink the potential of public administrations worldwide to serve the wider public interest has evolved into a growing global movement of public innovators, civic leaders and institutional changemakers..
12:05 – 12:45pm
Small Giants: The Cities Rewriting the Rules
Mayor Eckart Würzner
Deputy Mayor Nicole Jonic
Mayor Respati Achmad Ardianto
Moderator: Chris Fair
The most audacious urban thinking isn't coming from the world's megacities – it's coming from the ones that refuse to think small. These mayors of lead cities that punch far above their weight: nimble enough to move fast, bold enough to take risks, and hungry enough to reimagine what's possible. These are small giants — and the future of urban innovation belongs to them.
2:00 – 2:05pm
Welcome Back
MC, Jasmine Palardy
2:05 – 2:20pm
Cities of Hope
Vance Harris, DIALOG
Drawing on his work across communities and built environments, Vance Harris asks a deceptively simple question: what does it actually take to make a city feel hopeful? He argues that hope is not a feeling that arrives on its own — it is something cities must be intentionally designed to create, turning urban spaces from places that happen to people into places bursting with possibility for them.
2:25 - 3:00pm
Culture & Community as Invisible Infrastructure
Emilie Roelle, Our Heritage Homes
Dr. Hila Oren, Tel Aviv Foundation
Moderator: Chris Fair
How rituals, culture, spiritual spaces and social rhythms create social impact that shapes belonging, meaning, quality of life and resiliency.
3:05 – 3:30pm
Minds and Voices of the Future
Hazleen Ahmad, Global Systems Architect for Progressive Futures
What if kindness wasn't a value statement — but a design principle? Drawing on applied neuroscience and her work at the intersection of urban planning and cognitive science, Hazleen Ahmad makes the case that the cities performing best in the next decade won't just be the smartest or the greenest — they'll be the kindest. She explores how the built environment can be intentionally designed to reduce cognitive stress, foster social connection and give every resident — regardless of how their brain works — a genuine sense of belonging.
COFFEE BREAK | 3:30 – 4:00PM
4:00 - 4:05pm
Welcome Back
MC, Jasmine Palardy
4:05 - 4:40pm
Nature by Design
Moderator: Samantha Peart
Dr. Anne Kovachevich, Mott Macdonald
Tamara Singh, Managing Director, The Nature Conservancy
The evidence is clear — cities that integrate nature perform better on almost every measure. Drawing on the principles of the Nature in Design report, sustainability and design leaders from across the globe come together to ask: what will it actually take to make nature the default, not the exception, in how we build our cities?
4:45 - 5:30pm
The Next Urban Era
Dr. Parag Khanna
Greg Clark
Chris Fair
Urbanization was never a single story — but for decades, it moved in a recognizable direction: toward density, connectivity, and global integration. That consensus is fracturing. Deglobalization is pulling cities inward. Climate change is making some locations untenable and others suddenly strategic. And population trends are diverging sharply from one part of the world to the next.
Greg Clark and Parag Khanna explore what these colliding forces mean for the future of human settlement — and what a more fractured, climate-stressed, demographically complex urban world demands of the leaders, investors, and citizens shaping it.
Tues. June 16
9:00 – 9:05am
Opening of Day 2
MC, Jasmine Palardy
Introduction to the WRLDCTY Connections Stage – outline of WRLDCTY and background. Overview of what experiences delegates will have over the coming days.
9:05 – 9:30am
From Spectators to Participants
Amahl Hazelton, Strategy & Development at Moment Factory
Moderator: Chris Fair
What separates the places people return to from the ones they forget? Amahl Hazelton of Moment Factory argues it comes down to one thing: whether a place makes people feel something together. Drawing on landmark projects from Singapore to Madrid, he explores how immersive design, hidden technology and authentic storytelling are transforming cities, stadiums and public spaces into places of genuine human connection.
9:35 – 10:30am
Robots & the City: Platform or Place? – A Structured Debate
Steven Cornwell
Alex Baum
Hugo Lamb
Jasmine Palardy
Samantha Peart
Doug Jones
A formal Oxford-style debate on one of the most consequential questions facing cities in the next decade: will robots and automation make cities more human — reinforcing them as places to live, connect and age well — or will they transform cities into platforms for production and efficiency at the cost of urban quality of life?
BREAK | 10:30 – 11:00AM
11:00 – 11:20am
It All Starts With A Seed
Stephen Ritz, Green Bronx Machine
When we think of how people access food, markets, grocery stores, delivery systems, and street food come to mind. What about schools? Wrapping learning around growing and cooking food builds longevity into the fabric of education — and teaches students how to love plants, themselves, their friends, and their community. Rebuilding cities, the future of urban planning, and creating an equitable home for all species on the planet starts in classrooms and starts with food.
There is no greater equalizer than food and no place on earth that understands this better than Singapore.
11:25– 11:55Am
The Alignment Advantage: A New Playbook for Delivering Cities
Moderator: Nadia Levi, Colliers
Kate Thompson, President and CEO Calgary Municipal Land Corporation
Allie Janos, Founder and Principal, Place Insights LLC
Stefan Meissner, Head of Urban Design, Colliers
Cities are not short on ideas, they are short on alignment. Too often, projects stall as planning, design, capital, and governance operate in isolation, with feasibility and delivery considerations arriving too late to shape outcomes. This session challenges the traditional development model, highlighting how successful projects are built through early alignment of partners, capital, and policy. Featuring global case studies, we explore a more integrated approach, one where collaboration is structured from day one to unlock faster, more resilient urban delivery.
12:00 – 12:30pm
Plugged In, Left Out? Why Connection Needs Friction
Jakob Norman-Hansen, Director, Global Networks & Partnerships, Bloxhub
Ann-Britt Elvin Andersen, Chief Communications Officer, Bloxhub
In cities designed for seamless living, we’ve made it easier to move, navigate, and optimize, but harder to truly connect. This talk explores dilemmas shaping urban life today: the human tension between privacy and public connection, the social cost of hyper-efficient environments, and how the digital layer reshapes our sensory experience of the city.
LUNCH | 12:30 – 1:45PM
2:00 – 2:05pm
Welcome Back
2:05 – 2:25pm
Linear Greenways as Urban Catalyst
James Lima, JLPD
Great cities don't just plan for growth — they build the infrastructure that makes growth equitable and connected. James Lima draws on hard-won lessons from urban greenways including New York's High Line to show how bold repurposed infrastructure as public green space can unlock economic development, drive investment and stitch communities together. He'll explore how those principles are being applied at scale in Dallas, where The Loop — a 50-mile bike and pedestrian circuit connecting 39 existing trail miles across the nation's 9th largest city — is becoming a lifeline between neighbourhoods, a catalyst for mobility, and a defining part of the city's identity.
2:25 – 2:55pm
Design for Doing
Moderator: Heath Gledhill
Daniel Liu, Managing Director, Morrow Intelligence
Theo Malzieu, Partner, Urban Designer, Foster+Partners
Chintan Raveshia, Director, Cities, Planning & Design Leader Asia Pacific Region, Arup
The 21st century city was supposed to be smarter, greener, more connected. In many ways it is. But most cities are still designed around an ideal citizen who doesn't exist — built for how people should move, gather, work, and live, not what they actually do. The gap between design intent and lived reality is where the real city happens. The shortcut through the parking lot. The informal market in the transit plaza. The bench that becomes a bed, a desk, a stage. These aren't failures of planning — they're signals. They tell us what cities are truly optimised for, and what they're not.
This session brings together leading urban designers and planners shaping cities across four continents to ask the defining question of 21st century urbanism: how do we design cities for people as they are, not as we wish them to be?
3:00 – 3:30pm
Livability, Lovability, Longevity
Moderator: Jasmine Palardy
Rajiv Ahuja, WSDM Haus
Gary Gaston, CEO Civic Design Center
Darryl Condon, hcma
WRLDCTY Fellows share what’s working, what’s failing, and what’s transferable in designing for livability, lovability and longevity in our cities.
Celebrates the Fellows in and the research they have done in the days prior to the World Cities Summit Conference.