Five cities from across South-Eastern European and Central Asian region embarked on an exploration of a new approach to problem solving, which is rooted in systems thinking. The city councils began designing what are called systems thinking portfolios for urban transformation with the support of UNDP Europe and Central Asia.

Ongoing initiative

The following methods were employed: Deep listening, Agora Urban Transformation Stencil, strategic risk analysis and solution design.

The key method referred to is the “Agorà urban transformation portfolio framework”. The framework consists of two main phases: 1) the problem phase: unpacking the complex urban system, and 2) the solution phase: designing and implementing activities part of the urban transformation portfolio to learn how to address identified complex challenges. Ultimately, the aim is to develop Portfolios of Development Options. 

The process is described as follows: 

“Teams began their work by unpacking the complexity of the challenges they initially selected. This phase included deep listening, which is a process of identifying local narratives that surround both the challenge at hand, but also, more importantly, the city and its future in general. Once the teams developed a deep understanding of the issues they were attempting to tackle, they established their intent – what is it exactly that they want to change, who are they to change it, and what resources would they tap into? For some of the teams it meant reframing the entire challenge altogether, like shifting the focus from air pollution to alternative job opportunities for vulnerable groups, like in Pljevlja. For others it meant moving from a broader scope to a very specific challenge – like in the case of North Macedonia, where the team shifted from green growth to circularity in biowaste.  

With a clearly defined intent, each team then moved on to identifying the best places in selected systems to intervene. This sounds abstract, but in practice it is about noticing levers, bottlenecks, elements of the system that either attract the most or the least attention and that – when interacted with – can generate the biggest impact. This is what you design options for. And that’s what the teams did.” 

The city of Skopje e.g. identified 6 Zones of Experimentation (Municipal back office functions, Well-being, Arts, science and power, Digital and platform economy, New Urban Infrastructure, Redefining and Restructuring the Commons) where actions shall be taken, funded under UNDP’s City Experiment Fund. 

A concrete impact to climate neutrality cannot be shown, even though many measures hold the potential.

UNDP’s City Experiment Fund activities aim at innovating organisational models for public administrations towards a more open and citizen-centric governance mode that also uses data and IT. 

UNDP Europe and Central Asia

UNDP - Funding