The Sustainable Cities Collaboratory is a practically oriented research body. It brings together the knowledge and skills of mayors, municipal officers, urban practitioners and academic researchers to develop principles and policies for good urban practice. Its role is to develop practical roadmaps for sustainable urban development in the participating cities and beyond.
The Cities Collaboratory comprises a group of Metropolis cities, together with a small number of global advisors and a selection of important research centres from around the world. It is supported by a general secretariat in Berlin, and a core working group in the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University.
Objectives
The Collaboratory has the following objectives:
- To respond to important developments in urban sustainability, both at a city-level and globally, and take a lead in agenda-setting for positive social change;
- To develop a set of principles, policies and guidelines for sustainable urban development—building upon Metropolis’s ‘Principles for Better Cities’, and aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda;
- To share knowledge, experiences and ideas on the practical implementation of the ‘Principles for Better Cities’, the NUA and the SDGs;
- To provide a means of translating between different sets of principles in a way that guides practice;
- To create a powerful voice for successful practical implementations of principles for sustainable urban development;
- To develop and support the use of a set of coherent urban sustainability tools—building upon the Circles tools developed by Metropolis; and
- To maintain a database of exemplary sustainability projects—building upon use (urban sustainability exchange)