Build the City Challenge
Inclusive, climate-resilient smart cities
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
Imagine a world in which people are empowered to shape climate-resilient futures for their rapidly growing cities
What would a challenge prize look like?
The problem
Why a challenge prize
In the next 30 years another 2.5 billion people will call our cities home; in Africa alone, urban populations are expected to triple by 2050.15 Billions of people will be highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.16 To transform how our cities respond to climate threats, we need data-driven, evidence-based, inclusive tools to both decarbonise cities and direct investments toward better resilience, shaped by the people who live there. We need to upskill and empower the next generation of innovators and cities to rapidly create, test, implement and share data-driven planning and development tools and inclusive decision-making processes to understand, analyse and plan for future growth.
A challenge prize run in partnership with rapidly growing cities will enable cities to grow smarter and adapt to climate change. By opening locally based data sandboxes to innovators, a challenge can spark the creation of new tools, products or services with public authorities that enable more sustainable, equitable and impactful digital transformation. The challenge will empower communities that are often left out of the process to participate in the design of future cities, and to shape how breakthrough innovations such as AI or drones or other smart city technologies can manifest in their communities. Enabling innovators to iterate creative solutions in partnership with communities, under an open innovation competition, will foster innovation, support a cohort of local innovators matched with technical expertise, and unleash entrepreneurial energy to solve critical urban problems.
Local data sandboxes
Supporting local innovators
Shaping breakthrough technologies
What are the outcomes?
£15M to develop and test transformative solutions to shape equitable, climate resilient future city growth The Build the City Challenge will invite three cities in low- and middle-income countries that are grappling with rapid growth and face climate vulnerabilities to create and open up data sandboxes. These sandboxes will enable innovators to design data-driven, usercentred solutions in partnership with local residents, businesses, government agencies and services to create better opportunities for all. The city-based
Community empowerment
Smart city innovations based on local demand Co-designed with local communities
challenges will be designed to foster specific outcomes, such as using data analytics to test interventions against different growth scenarios or create an AI-based emissions metrics tracker, or designing future transport systems based on city growth prediction models, or devising participatory planning and citizen sensing tools to understand pressing local problems.
Data-driven, usercentred solutions
INDICATIVE Timeline 15. B. Hajjar, Africa’s urban population to triple by 2050, Racconteur (2019). 16. H.-O. Pörtner et al., Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, IPCC (2022).
20
Month 1 Open call for cities
Month 12 Shaping city challenges
Month 18 Launch of local challenges
Month 36 Piloting and testing
Month 48 Winners selected
- Recruiting city partners
- Engage city leaders to frame call to action to innovators
- Innovator outreach
- Capacity building
- Solution development with innovators and communities
- Grant funding
- 15M to the three winning teams
- Outreach to drive applications from diverse conte ts - 3 cities selected
- Establish baseline data and impact targets
- Finalists selected for each city - Capacity building - Grant funding
Climate Possible: How funders can accelerate innovation for a resilient future
- Demonstrations in real-world conte ts - Developing business models - Final submissions