Cities are complex systems that exist to resolve many human problems simultaneously. They provide people with jobs, housing, education, culture, health, entertainment, organization, government. Over time they have evolved to become economic and social epicenters fostering innovative solutions to societal challenges while creating new challenges in their wake. We are now living in an urban era facing a climate crisis. It is more important than ever that we focus efforts to get cities right.

At the local level, decision-making is usually organized to respond to these different needs in siloed structures, narrowly looking at issues like transportation, waste management, drainage, parks, water, education, land use, economic development, and housing, all independently.

This compartmentalized organization does not consider the multifaceted nature of many of the problems that city governments are trying to resolve and ignores the opportunity for integrated planning to make investments, programs and service provision more efficient and co-beneficial across sectors, creating a win-win for city management and residents alike.

To be more impactful, integrated urban planning proposes a different kind of decision-making for cities, in which key actors from different parts and levels of government collaborate to make decisions together, and

create projects and services that maximize the use of taxes creating cascading benefits: social, economic and environmental. Additionally, integrated urban planning proposes inclusive approaches in which civil society and minority populations are key actors in the decision-making process.

Integrated urban planning allows us to explore questions such as how to address urban growth, while simultaneously connecting people to sustainable jobs, and providing equitable and just service provision while conserving key ecosystems and resources. To do this effectively, data must be at the core of these types of questions. Cities need to recognize the opportunity and limitations of data to aid in decision-making, drawing from local knowledge including vulnerable and indigenous communities, interagency data collection and coordination and best practices for managing and updating data.