Local governments are manning the front lines of our most important global battles -- from managing severe weather and other climate shocks to preparing for the next pandemic, ensuring health for all, rectifying longstanding racial inequities, and addressing housing affordability. Urban areas now account for over half the world's population, and their governments are uniquely positioned to understand and address their own communities' needs.
Whether or not we realise it, we have pinned many of our hopes for progress on municipal action and bottom-up creativity. Recent "recovery programmes" like NextGenerationEU and the US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are explicitly designed to inject cash into local economies, and such place-based funding requires local governments to bring new thinking to bear on issues such as sustainable mobility and the digital divide.
