Reflections from three days at the world's preeminent global cities summit.
"The more national governments retreat from the world stage, the more important mayors become."
That was Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and three-term Mayor of New York City, on the opening morning of the 12th Bloomberg CityLab in Madrid this April. His line set the tone for three days of conversation about what city leadership looks like in this era.
The event brought together more than 1,000 mayors, policymakers, innovators, and creatives from across the world, hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Aspen Institute, and welcomed by Pedro Sánchez, President of the Government of Spain. Three days, packed plenaries, side conversations everywhere, and a real sense that the global conversation about cities was happening right here.
All Things Urban was in the room as one of the leading global platforms in urbanism, and a community of 100,000+ professionals shaping better cities. Our work is to connect urbanists across the world, equip them with skills and opportunities, and help shape a stronger, more connected field, in partnership with universities, public institutions, and city leaders. That work is exactly why we are sharing this piece. Drawing on the reflections and notes of our founder and CEO, Anastasia Sukhoroslova, who attended on behalf of our community, we are passing along the trends, ideas, and provocations that felt most relevant for urbanists everywhere, whatever your corner of the field.
CityLab was also, for us, a chance to reconnect with familiar voices in the field, meet potential collaborators and partners, spend real time with friends old and new (good to see fellow Urban Future Young Leaders in the room, among others), and host a community breakfast for our All Things Urban Madrid Chapter. Beyond the panels, three days like these are when the field actually thinks together, where ideas move between cities and where the next collaborations begin to take shape.
The themes were big. AI. Housing. Climate. Workforce. Trust. But the through-line, said most clearly by James Anderson, Government Innovation Lead at Bloomberg Philanthropies, in his closing remarks, was something simpler:
"The expertise we need won't be found exclusively in our city halls. It exists in our communities, in people's lived experiences. Rebuilding trust means bringing that collective wisdom in, not as feedback, but as partnership."
That sentence captures what stood out most. The conversations were less about cities as machines to optimise, and more about cities as relationships to nurture.
Here is what stayed with us.
1. Cities are stepping up
Bloomberg's opening framing ran through nearly every session that followed. What we noticed across the program was a clear shift in tone: cities are no longer waiting for direction, they are setting it. Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, made the same point in the AI panel, drawing a sharp contrast between national governments that hesitate and cities that get on with the work.
The energy was practical, not performative. Bloomberg used his opening remarks to announce a new $350 million commitment to his foundation's road safety work, building on nearly two decades of investment that has helped pass close to 200 policies and, by his team's estimate, saved around a million lives. The goal now is another million by 2030. Anne Hidalgo, who completed her second term as Mayor of Paris earlier this year, reflected on legacy and long-term transformation. Session after session, the message repeated itself: the most ambitious work in public life right now is happening at the city level.
What this means for our work: the centre of gravity is shifting toward cities as primary actors, not implementers of national agendas. For urbanists, this is where the most ambitious work, the most interesting partnerships, and the boldest experiments are concentrated. It is also where the next generation of urban careers will be built.
2. Community as co-author
The strongest sessions returned, again and again, to the same idea: residents are not an audience for city policy. They are co-authors of it.
Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, put it in a line worth writing down twice:
"Working with people, not at them."
She gave concrete examples. Her own borough of Camden in London brought carers and the people they care for to the table to redesign adult social care. Cities like Rio de Janeiro have experimented with outcomes-oriented budgeting that breaks ministerial silos. She is also developing a public sector capability index with Bloomberg Philanthropies' government innovation team, on the argument that we have spent decades studying what makes the private sector work and almost none studying the public sector. Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco described his own version of this in plainer language: visible action on a small number of priorities, and a commitment to "governing out loud" through social media so residents can actually see what their government is doing. His city's "right track" sentiment has moved from 22% two years ago to roughly 65% today.
The same logic ran through the sessions on youth. Practitioners working with the Bloomberg Philanthropies Youth Climate Action Fund described what makes youth engagement actually work after two years of the programme, and the Fund is now expanding to many more cities. Alongside case studies from Catalonia's civic education curriculum, where students identify a problem in their own community, design a project, and present it to local authorities, the framing was clear. Young people are not beneficiaries of climate or governance work. They are leaders of it, when given real autonomy: real challenges, real budgets, real decisions, and visible mayoral involvement.
What this means for our work: the era of consultation theatre, where engagement happens after the design decisions are already made, is closing. Real participation is moving into the design phase itself. For urbanists, this changes the brief: we are not designing for residents, we are designing with them. And that includes designing with the next generation, not just for them.
3. The workforce shift, and why urbanists should be paying attention
This was the fastest-moving conversation at CityLab, and for us, one of the most important. AI is reshaping which roles will exist in five years. National workforce systems are slow to respond. Cities are filling the gap.
Mayor Khan announced a new London AI and Jobs Taskforce alongside free AI training for under-25s. Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones of San Antonio described reallocating $140 million toward the trades, on the logic that not every good job will or should be a tech job. In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu's team is building a new high school in direct partnership with Mass General Brigham, the city's largest employer, with paid work-based learning embedded in the curriculum. A separate panel on vocational education made the case for permeable systems, where vocational tracks and academic tracks connect cleanly and no path becomes a dead end. Switzerland's dual education model, where most young people spend several days a week working inside real companies, kept coming up as a benchmark.
What we noticed across all of it: the workforce conversation is no longer separate from urbanism. Cities are increasingly the level of government most directly responsible for talent pipelines, employer partnerships, and skills systems. And the cities pulling ahead are treating those systems as core infrastructure, alongside transit and housing.
At ATU, this is also the conversation we have every day with our community. Careers in urbanism are changing faster than the institutions that train people for them. AI is shifting which skills compound. Cross-sector partnerships are creating new pathways that did not exist five years ago.
What this means for our work: if you are building a career in this field, the bar is moving. Technical skills matter, but the urbanists who will be most valuable are the ones who can connect technical capability to real outcomes for people, work fluently across sectors, and adapt as the field changes shape. If you are running programmes, designing courses, or shaping institutions, the demand signal is clear: urbanism education needs to evolve in step with the cities it is preparing people for.
4. Technology and data, in service of people
AI was everywhere at CityLab, but the most useful sessions stayed grounded.
Cities are using AI to predict transit congestion, detect poor housing conditions, accelerate cancer diagnosis, find water leaks, and map cooling needs. None of this is a future scenario. It is happening now. A co-founder of ElevenLabs described the Ukrainian government's deployment of voice AI on its central services platform, which lets citizens access benefits and government services by speaking rather than filling in forms, even in the middle of a war. The most useful framing came from Mayor Khan, who rejected both the AI evangelists and the AI pessimists in favour of a clear-eyed middle path, and announced London's participation in a new mayoral AI forum launched at the summit:
"This network will ensure we're shaping how AI is developed and deployed rather than allowing it to shape us."
Transit followed a similar logic. Daniel Ramot, co-founder and CEO of Via Transportation, described how Sioux Falls, South Dakota grew transit ridership 40% in under two years by replacing under-utilised circuitous bus routes with a combination of frequent direct lines and dynamic microtransit. In Muskegon, Michigan, 60% of residents using a new microtransit service reported gaining employment because of it. Carlo Ratti, Director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, took the people-centred frame in a different direction in his session on the future of public space, returning to the plaza as a still-relevant urban form even in an age of digital everything.
Some of the clearest examples of technology genuinely serving people came from the Breathe Cities panel, moderated by Cecilia Vaca Jones, Executive Director of Breathe Cities. Three mayors, three radically different city contexts, the same insight. Sakaja Arthur Johnson, Governor of Nairobi City County, Kenya, described how 87 air quality sensors now feed a public dashboard accessible to all 7 million residents. The most powerful outcome is not the data itself but what residents are doing with it: community leaders, particularly women, are using the readings to tell youth groups to stop burning trash in their neighbourhoods, because they can see the pollution numbers move in real time.
In Bogotá, Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán used the data to reveal that respiratory disease deaths in the city's most vulnerable southwestern neighbourhoods were twice the city average, and responded with a concentrated 2.2 sq km intervention. In Warsaw, Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski oversaw a 46% drop in PM2.5, alongside a reframe of the city's Clean Air Zone from "ideology" to "health", now backed by 160 sensors residents check in real time.
Trzaskowski's line was one of the most quietly powerful of the conference:
"Data does not make tough decisions easier. It makes them more understandable to the people."
This is close to the work we do at GeoSpatial Hub, powered by All Things Urban, where we build spatial data and GIS capacity for teams, municipalities, think tanks, and urban design offices. Watching three mayors make the case on one stage for hyperlocal data as a tool for public trust was a good reminder of why that capacity matters, and of how much of the value sits in judgement rather than tooling. That is also why AI runs through our education programmes on data visualisation and spatial literacy: not just how to use the tools, but where not to, and how to hold onto professional judgement when the outputs look convincing.
What this means for our work: the bar is shifting from "deploy the technology" to "design the service around the resident". Data and AI are most valuable when they build legitimacy with the public, not when they replace human judgement. For urbanists working in mobility, civic tech, climate, or city operations, this is where the field is heading.
5. Housing for how people actually live
Housing was framed differently than expected. Less about supply targets, more about who housing is even built for.
The opening statistic of the housing panel: 35% of households globally will soon consist of just one person. Most housing systems still assume the nuclear family.
Three responses caught our attention. Mayor Tatsuo Igarashi of Tsukuba City, Japan, is treating housing as social infrastructure, offering floor-area-ratio bonuses to developers who build single-person units with shared ground-floor space, and piloting smart meters that detect isolation in elderly residents. Anna Bedmar, co-founder and co-CEO of Habitacion.com in Spain, is helping young professionals co-buy property using Spain's pro-indiviso legal framework, addressing a market where the average first-home buyer needs sixteen years of savings. Tom Copley, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development for London, described how London is permitting co-living formally in its Plan, but explicitly not as a substitute for conventional housing.
What this means for our work: housing as loneliness response. Housing as wealth-building scaffolding for younger generations. Housing as cultural infrastructure. These framings are reaching mayoral offices, and they will increasingly shape what cities commission, fund, and regulate. For urbanists in housing, planning, or social policy, the conversation has widened, and the opportunities with it.
6. Why connection itself was the real story
Three days in Madrid reaffirmed something we already believed: the work of building better cities is fundamentally relational.
Mayors borrowed each other's policies openly. Philanthropies introduced founders to ministries. Researchers connected practitioners across continents. Communities like ours connected the people in the room to the much larger ecosystem of urbanists who were not. None of this was incidental. The structure of the event was the message. Cities make progress when the people shaping them are actually connected to one another, across mayors and ministries, philanthropies and private sector, researchers and community organisers.
This is why All Things Urban exists, and why being in Madrid mattered to us. The job is not just to share knowledge. It is to make sure the right people meet the right people at the right time, across geographies, sectors, and seniority levels.
James Anderson said it better than we can:
"There was a time when governments could announce something, go behind closed doors, come back in six months, announce some results. That time is over. Leadership today has to look different. It means doing the work, and showing the work."
Showing the work means being visible. It means inviting people in. It means treating community not as an audience but as a co-author. The cities that are doing this well are building real trust at a moment when trust is the rarest currency in public life.
What this means for our work: if you have ever questioned whether networks, communities, and platforms matter in this work, Madrid was the answer. They matter enormously. They are how good ideas travel, how careers grow, and how cities learn from each other faster than any single institution can move alone. Or, as Michael Bloomberg put it in his opening remarks: "There is no limit to what we can achieve if we work together."
Looking ahead
Bloomberg CityLab 2027 will be hosted in San Francisco, with an open innovation challenge inviting residents into the design of the event itself. Fitting, given where this year's conversation landed.
Our thanks to Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Aspen Institute, and the city of Madrid for three days of genuinely meaningful conversation. We left with ideas, contacts, and a renewed sense of what this community is capable of. We will be bringing more of it back to all of you in the work ahead, through our hubs, programmes, and the conversations we host every week.
If you want to be part of that work, this is your invitation.
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Reflections and notes from Madrid by Anastasia Sukhoroslova, Founder and CEO of All Things Urban.