The Role of Sustainable Urban and Infrastructure Development in Augmenting City Competitiveness

This book, entitled “City Competitiveness and Improving Urban Subsystems: Technologies and Applications,” explores a range of interests and activities concerning city competitiveness and urban systems from distinct disciplinary perspectives, including research from experts focusing on technology, planning, governance, and engineering. The primary focus of the book is one of the most important topics of our time, city competitiveness and urban systems. This book more specifically concentrates on the interconnectedness of social, economic, environmental and governing issues. The book makes an important contribution to city competitiveness literature, highlighting the role of urban systems and bringing together the recent research findings from many disciplines in a single edited collection. This book is an invaluable resource as it highlights alternatives and approaches in urban systems technology and applications for not only academics, but also city administrators and the urban systems development industry. The book also provides useful directions for policy-makers to set sensible strategies for building prosperous and competitive cities for their citizens. I was honoured when asked to write the foreword of this book and here below are some thoughts and insights from my academic, public sector, and professional practice experiences on the very topic of the book—urban competitiveness and urban systems.