The document proposes establishing the Global Centre for Cities Innovation and Revitalization (GCCIR) to address potential global disasters facing cities by 2030. The GCCIR would be an international organization that brings together cities to promote sustainability, livability, revitalization and growth. It would fund programs through member city dues and contributions. The GCCIR would use challenge-driven innovation and crowdsourcing to solve cities' problems related to services, citizens, business, transportation, communication, water and more. The goal is to help cities attract and develop their citizens' skills and creativity to compete in the new talent-based economy.

1. ENVISIONED DISASTER:
Global cities configuration break down
Severe Economic meltdown
Severe Transportation disaster
Health disaster
Competition for limited resources
Pollution
Overcrowding
Severe Climate change
Policy disaster
Natural resource extinction
AREA:
disaster prevention, preparedness, response and adaptation
NAME:
Michael Iyanro
COUNTRY:
NIGERIA

2.  Before year 2030, if urgent measures are not quickly taken to make our cities more
livable and sustainable by revitalizing our current system and innovating for the
future, the world is prone to face a severe catastrophe such as:
 Severe Economic disaster
 Global cities configuration breakdown
 Severe Transportation disaster
 Health disaster
 Competition for limited resources
 Pollution
 Overcrowding
 Severe Climate change
 Policy disaster
 Natural resource extinction
Nevertheless, have chosen these ones because of the immense pressure that increase
in population now placed on our major cities across the world. This year our global
population reached the 7 billion mark – an historic milestone that brings with it new
questions of economic, social and environmental sustainability. With over 50% of
that 7 billion now living in cities, unprecedented strain is being placed on our urban
centers to adapt and innovate, to absorb newcomers or redefine their boundaries,
and to continue to support and enable opportunities for their residents.

3.  Many communities around the world, including Detroit, Michigan; Madrid, Spain; Athens, Greece;
and others, currently find themselves struggling with issues like loss of industry, rising
unemployment, increased cost of living and decreased access to city services. For example, after a
precipitous decline from prosperity in the 1970s and 80s, revitalization efforts in Detroit have faced
an uphill battle. Despite encouraging signs, the latest city census revealed a 25% population loss to
surrounding suburbs, which has had severe economic, cultural and sociological consequences.
Cities are being empowered at a time when they face significant challenges and threats to
sustainability in each interrelated system and must act now to secure future prosperity.
 City services: From greater individualization to fiscal constraints, city services are coming under
increasing pressure.
 Citizens: From demographic changes to health, cities face major challenges and threats to their
sustainability.
 Business: Cities must balance complex regulatory requirements with the need to minimize
unnecessary administrative burdens.
 Transport: Inefficient systems will continue to drive up costs without city action.
 Communication: Cities face challenges in meeting ever greater demands for connectivity.
 Water: Problems with water efficiency, leakage, quality and the threat of flooding pose a significant
threat to cities’ sustainability.
 In Nigeria for instance, where our largest 36 metro areas account for 65 percent of our population,
and 75 percent our economic output, this trend is long way. Our population is expected to grow by
another 50 percent in the first half of this century-this at the same time we have bad economy, high
rate of unemployment, bad roads, crowded cities, wastewater systems over a century old, schools in
dire need of repair, an inefficient transportation system, and a housing policy with too little emphasis
on affordable rental options. Here we’ve learned that the neighborhoods facing the brunt of this
economic crisis are often the least sustainable-with the least access to transportation, the most
troubled schools, and the least economic opportunity. So the challenge of this moment is clear: to
build communities in the most holistic way possible-sustainably, so that we can meet the needs of
today without compromising the futures of our children and grand children.

4. The transformation we are witnessing in our cities and in our population are
certain to be one of the pressing challenges facing the global community
in the 21st century.
Cities are based on a number of different systems – infrastructures,
networks and environments – central to their operation and development:
city services, citizens, business, transport, communication, water and
energy. The effectiveness and efficiency of these systems determine how
a city works and how successful it is at delivering its goals. These systems
are not discrete and must be considered holistically, as well as
Individually.
However, these foretold disasters might occur soon even before 2030 if: our
city planning system remain inefficient.
 If we fail to innovate for our cities across the world and revitalize our
Agric-food systems, Housing and buildings systems, Communication
systems ,Human security systems, Cultural systems ,Land use systems,
Decision support systems, Materials systems, Economic development
systems ,Mobility systems, Energy systems ,Natural habitat & green space
systems, First Nations systems, Social equity systems, Governance
systems ,Water systems, Health and well-being systems globally, then the
disaster will strike badly.

5. I don't want to reinvent the wheel , I want to use it to its maximum
potential . That entails founding Global Centre for Cities
Innovation and Revitalization as a constituted body or perhaps
organization that will be saddled with the responsibility of
innovating, inventing, experimenting, creating and assessing the
part to prosperity for cities globally in order to reduce the
menace of the foretold disasters.
The centre will recruit next-generation thinkers, strategists, in
the areas of urbanism, architecture, art, design, science,
technology, education, and sustainability. The centre will address
issues of contemporary urban life through programs, public
discourse, idea exchange, invention and innovation. My goal is
the exploration of new ideas, experimentation, and ultimately
the creation of forward-thinking solutions for cities around the
world. The centre, just like the United Nations will help the
world to prevent, prepare, respond and adapt to future disasters.

6.  Global Centre for Cities Innovation and Revitalization (GCCIR) will be an organization
with international presence in countries and cities around the world created to promote
world cities livability, sustainability, revitalization and growth.
 The GCCIR will be an organization for cities that agree to cooperate with one another.
It will bring together cities that are rich and poor, large and small, and have different
social and political systems. Member cities will pledge to cooperate with one another
working towards achieving common goals of sustainability and growth in all
ramifications. The organization will have a Secretariat and it will be located in
Slovenia. The Secretariat will be the GCCIR’s executive branch. It will oversee the
administration of the GCCIR’s programs and policies and carries out day-to-day
operations. This branch will be headed by the secretary general, who will act as the
GCCIR’s spokesperson.
 GCCIR will be funded by dues paid by each of its members. Each cities due will be
based upon its wealth and ability to pay. The GCCIR will also require cities to make
financial contributions to its developmental efforts. In addition, GCCIR will seek for
collaboration with organizations , companies, for profit and non profit sector for
voluntary contributions to support various GCCIR programs across the globe.
. GCCIR expertise will also feature Open Innovation (OI). GCCIR will help expand
corporate innovation capabilities by building a more collaborative approach to problem
solving, and providing the means to tap into the best minds within GCCIR Community
throughout the world. By unleashing human creativity, passion and diversity, we can
solve problems that matter to our world, business and society.

7.  More than ever, the traditional "bricks-and-mortar" drivers of economic growth are
giving way to an economy based on "brains and creativity." Competitive
differentiation today is more likely to be based on the ability of the workforce to
create and absorb skills and innovation than on traditional drivers such as available
natural resources, physical labor or manufacturing prowess. As a result, the skills,
aptitude, knowledge, creativity and innovation of a workforce – which collectively
can be viewed as the talent pool in the economy – have become increasingly
important drivers of economic growth and activity.
 Cities, as hubs of the global economy, are the focal points for this transformation. In
the immediate future, three interconnected factors will place even more emphasis
on the role of cities in talent-based economic development:
 The world is at an unprecedented level of urbanization.
 Cities contain an increasingly large share of the world’s highly skilled, educated,
creative and entrepreneurial population, giving rise to highly concentrated and
diverse pools of knowledge and knowledge-creation networks.
 Cities can support large-scale business and investment networks that create
economies of scale in absorbing and extending innovation
 To compete in this new economic environment, cities will need to better apply
advanced information technology, analytics and systems thinking to develop a more
citizen-centric approach to services. By doing so, they can better attract, create,
enable and retain their citizens’ skills, knowledge and creativity. That is where
GCCIR comes in.

8. What makes this model innovative is three fold
1. we are bringing innovation for cities around the world down from a
complex environment into a simpler environment.
2. It involves a collaborative problem solving process for cities
3. It carries with it better algorithm for identifying complications within
cities.
GCCIR will function as an open innovation and crowd sourcing pioneer that
will enable governments, and organizations to solve their key
problems by connecting them to diverse sources of innovation
including employees, customers, partners, and the world’s largest
problem solving marketplace. GCCIR challenge driven methodology
which will include offline and online problem solving, community of
millions of problem Solvers within GCCIR, and cloud-based
technology platform will combine to fundamentally transform the
economics of innovation for our cities globally and R&D through
rapid solution delivery and the development of sustainable open
innovation programs.
There are other organizations around the world striving to make our cities a
better place to live in. However, the effort had always been on a regional
base which is not often collaborative in nature and replicable globally. I
hope to see GCCIR become the platform that will truly unite our cities
around the world in order to collectively solve the challenges of the 21st
century facing our cities.

9. The goals is to:
 Tailor services to the needs of individual citizens.
 Reduce crime and react faster to public safety threats, by analyzing information in real-time
 Use better connections and advanced analytics to interpret vast amounts of data collected to improve
health outcomes.
 Eliminate congestion and generate sustainable new revenues, while integrating all transport modes with
each other and the wider economy
 Connect up all businesses, citizens and systems with universal affordable high-speed connectivity.
 Analyze entire water ecosystems, from rivers and reservoirs to the pumps and pipes in our homes.
 Give individuals and businesses timely insight into their own water use, raising awareness, locating
inefficiencies and decreasing unnecessary demand.
 Impose the highest standards on business activities, while improving business efficiency.
 Allow consumers to send price signals – and energy – back to the market, smoothing consumption and
lowering usage.
 GCCIR will use a special innovative methodology called challenge driven innovation, an innovation
framework that will accelerate traditional innovation outcomes by leveraging open innovation and crowd
sourcing along with defined methodology, process, and tools to help organizations and governments
develop and implement actionable solutions to their key problems, opportunities, and challenges.
 The global economy is forcing organizations to attack problems with all the brainpower they can muster
both inside and outside the enterprise. Unlocking the potential of millions of people to work productively on
pressing problems is the power of Challenge driven innovation.
 And I believe that’s the future.
 My expected impact will be ground-breaking solution for the problem of the cities around the world For City
livability , sustainability, and growth.

10.  I believe that innovation and problem solving need to evolve in order to meet the
challenges of the 21st century.
By unleashing human creativity, passion and diversity, I believe we can solve
problems that matter to business and society. Once you untether the search for
solutions from an individual, department or company, amazing things happen.
Problems are solved better, faster, and at a lower cost than ever before. Many people
are still out there without a platform to showcase what they have to contribute into the
future of our world. I believe global dialogue to problem solving for our world will go a
long way.
 In the twenty-first century, growth, economic value and competitive differentiation of
cities will increasingly be derived from people and their skills, creativity and
knowledge, as well as the capacity of the economy to create and absorb innovation.
To compete in this new economic environment, cities will need to better apply
advanced information technology, analytics and systems thinking to develop a more
citizen-centric approach to services. By doing so, they can better attract, create,
enable and retain their citizens’ skills, knowledge and creativity. That is were GCCIR
comes in to make all of our aspiration possible.