and the Institute for Sustainability and was Special Advisor to the C40 Cities Group chaired by Michael R. Bloomberg during his time as Mayor of New York. An engineer, he built his career working with organizations to structure their projects and programmes. Martin is also a trustee at Heart of the City, a charity that supports SMEs in London to tackle issues including climate action.
He has held several roles at Siemens including Global Head of Urban Development and is currently Head of Sustainability and Environmental Initiatives at Siemens Inc., with a focus on financing climate action.
Austin Williams
The Emerging City – Some countries don’t need western lectures on sustainable development; they simply need to be allowed to develop. This chapter is about development without prefixes, full stop. This is Malawi’s story.
Austin Williams is a senior lecturer in Professional Practice in Architecture at Kingston School of Art in London and Honorary Research Fellow at XJTLU University, Suzhou, China. He is director of the Future Cities Project, and the author of China’s Urban Revolution: Understanding Chinese Eco-cities (Bloomsbury, 2017) and New Chinese Architecture: Twenty Women Building the Future (Thames and Hudson, 2019).
Austin founded the mantownhuman manifesto featured in Penguin Classics’ 100 Artists’ Manifestos. He has spoken at a wide range of conferences, from New York to Ningbo, from Hawaii to Hong Kong, and is a regular media commentator on development, environmentalism, and China. He has written for magazines as diverse as Nature, Wired, Top Gear, Wallpaper, Times Literary Supplement, and The Economist. He has directed over 200 short documentaries for NBS TV and authored and illustrated the Shortcuts design guides. For more information see WeChat/Twitter: Future_Cities andwww.futurecities.org.uk.
Patricia Holly Purcell
The Sustainable City – This chapter sets out the UN global frameworks for tackling climate change and the SDGs, how local governments feature in these international agendas, and the role of cities in advancing solutions to some of the greatest challenges of our time.
Patricia Holly Purcell has more than 15 years’ experience in the public and private sectors leading global sustainability initiatives for multinational corporations and the UN. She is currently a private sector specialist for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), focused on unlocking and leveraging private sector engagement and investment to support increased ambition of countries’ climate change goals and delivering opportunities to scale solutions across key sectors of the economy, including energy, ecosystems, health, and agriculture, among others.
Patricia is co-founder and Chair of the OECD Expert Group on Investing in the SDGs in Cities. Before joining UNDP, she served as Senior Strategic Advisor and Head of Partnerships to the UN Global Compact in New York. Previously, she was Senior Advisor to the UN Under Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-Habitat, based in their Nairobi headquarters, where she led the Agency’s strategic policy and programmatic initiatives, including creation of a global multilateral trust fund for sustainable development in conjunction with the World Bank. Prior to this, she served as Technical and Strategic Adviser to the Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General on Disaster Risk Reduction, based in Geneva.
Before joining the UN, Patricia was the founding director of Commercial Sustainability for the London-based Willis Group, a global insurance broker covering 180 countries. She began her career as a London-based financial journalist with an emphasis on climate change, writing for The Economist, The Financial Times, The Times, and The Guardian. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Management from the University of York with a focus on the nexus between climate change and inequality, and is currently pursuing a PhD. She is originally from New York City and presently lives in Barcelona.
Amanda Eichel and Kerem Yilmaz
The Vocal City – Recognizing cities and the voice of cities in the 2015 Paris Agreement was the culmination of a nearly 30-year effort from advocates, city networks, and cooperative initiatives. There are, however, limits to what cities and the community that supports them can do alone – the voice of cities must better connect with the capabilities, skills, and learnings from other levels of government, as well as outside perspectives, to deliver action that both is locally appropriate and ensures climate friendly outcomes.
Amanda Eichel was the former Executive Director of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy based in Brussels. Previously, Amanda led efforts to grow the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group under the chairmanship of Michael Bloomberg, where she built regional and programmatic teams and directed research and knowledge management efforts. Before joining C40, Amanda worked for New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and served as Climate Protection Advisor to the Mayor of Seattle, Washington under the administrations of Mayor Greg Nickels and Mayor Mike McGinn. Prior to her work with city governments, Amanda held positions in the California State Assembly Speaker’s Office and California State & Consumer Services Agency, where she led efforts to green state building investments, fleet management, and procurement.
Kerem Yilmaz has worked in a variety of capacities, from Fortune 500 companies and global philanthropic organizations, to small businesses, and start-up NGOs. Currently he is President of Sprout Solutions, a boutique consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations conceptualize and deliver on long-term, strategic sustainability initiatives. He also serves as Head of Strategy to The Resilience Shift, shaping the organization’s direction to promote greater resilience through influencing policy, driving practice, and sharing key learnings. Previously, he served as Strategy and Operations Director for the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy in Brussels, Belgium. Kerem received his Master of Public Policy from the University of Southern California and Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley.
Bruce Katz and Luise Noring
The Governed City – Cities can tackle climate change if and only if they have institutions with the capacity, capital, and community standing necessary to get the job done. Capable governance and quality finance are essential, but often overlooked, elements of climate solutions.
Bruce Katz is the founding director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Since its inception in 2018, the Nowak Lab has strived to help cities and regions design, finance, and deliver transformative initiatives to drive innovative, inclusive, and sustainable growth. Previously, Bruce served for 21 years at the Brookings Institution, including as vice president and founding director of Brooking’s Metropolitan Policy Program and as the Institution’s inaugural Centennial Scholar. He is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics, and previously served as chief of staff to Henry Cisneros, Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development during the first term of the Clinton Administration and staff director of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs. In 2008/2009, he co-led the Obama Administration’s housing and urban transition team. Bruce is co-author of The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing our Broken Politics and Fragile Economies (Brookings Institution Press, 2013)
