What Makes a Good City?

What connects Taylor Swift, a bomb scare and Copenhagen’s new bragging rights? The benchmarks used to judge what makes a good city. A high-profile concert cancellation in Vienna in August 2024 following a security alert left thousands of Swifties disappointed and knocked the city off the top spot of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2025 Liveability Index. For the first time in three years, Vienna slid down to joint second place, shared with Zurich, after its score on stability took a dent following the foiled terrorist threat. Copenhagen took the top spot and was crowned the world’s most liveable city.  

That twist is more than pop culture trivia; it is about how we imagine, plan and finance cities. Rankings do not just measure liveability in cities. They define what a good city is meant to be: stable, clean, cultured, efficient, and easy to navigate. The Liveability Index is perhaps the best-known example, but not the only one. Monocle, Mercer and InterNations all also publish their own versions. 

These indices are useful, but also partial. They tend to prioritize expatriate and investor needs, gloss over stark inequalities within a city, and put Western European, North American and Australasian cities on the podium year after year. The latter especially tells us more about the biases of the lens than about the reality on the ground. If we treat these lists as the definition of what makes a good city, we risk crowding out what residents themselves value most.

Why does this matter and why should development practitioners care? Because this is the urban century. Most people now live in cities, with the fastest growth unfolding in small- and medium-sized centers across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Cities sit at the center of development, concentrating both possibility and risk. This includes their often-untapped potential to mitigate climate change challenges or harness economic opportunity, while they’re increasingly on the frontlines of conflict, struggling with housing crises and left vulnerable to disaster risks. 

Instead of importing a template of the good city — be it the “green city,” the “smart city” or the “inclusive city” — international cooperation can help each place negotiate its own version of “good.” Even more importantly, it can support them with turning this vision into realistic, fundable and doable steps.    

What follows sketches out where our city ideas come from, why imported models often miss the mark, and six practical principles any program can use to support a shared, resident-centred and realistic urban vision of a good city — even with limited resources.    

Defining a good city 

What makes a good city? Ask ten residents and you will hear ten different answers — and that plurality is the point. This question has preoccupied urban planners for decades and it animates our own work at Helvetas. I asked some of my colleagues working in our urban program what they thought.    

At Helvetas, we acknowledge how ideas of a good city can frame urban discussions, but we do not strive for a prescribed universal checklist. Rather, we support the processes that bring stakeholders together to negotiate a shared direction for a specific place — and to anchor that direction in policy, budgets and everyday practices.  

The evolution of the urban agenda 

A quick look back at how the urban agenda has developed over time also reveals a plurality of thinking. Ideas of what makes a good city tend to mirror the political, economic and social debates of the day.  

The “garden city movement,” for example, emerged in the early twentieth century in Europe when urban reformers lobbied for low density and green spaces as a response to the crowded, polluted and unhealthy cities of the industrial revolution. By the 1950s and 60s, modernist, top-down planning promised speed and order — privileging motorists and fresh starts. Across Africa and Asia, new, purpose-built capitals displayed monumental government buildings, wide avenues and ceremonial squares that symbolized nation-building and a break with colonial rule.    

The agenda shifted to “human settlements” in the 1970s: Rapid urbanization and the expansion of slums pushed a pragmatic focus on adequate shelter and basic services, and UN-Habitat was born to respond to this global challenge. Neoliberal orthodoxy became the order of the day in the 1980s and 1990s. The city was recast through a market lens that pushed for privatization and efficiency, while democratization jointly reframed the city as participatory and accountable.  

Today, climate risk elevates the urban priorities of resilience and sustainability — think of risk-informed planning, nature-based solutions, the compact city model and densification logic like the “15-minute city.” With increasing authoritarianism globally, urban and political thinkers are now documenting the role of cities as cosmopolitan sanctuaries that are more protected from the divisive politics playing out at the national level (for example, see this special edition on Resistant Cities).   

Each wave of the evolving urban agenda came with counter logic. When copied uncritically, garden city ideals fed urban sprawl. Modernism delivered housing and infrastructure at speed but erased street life and informality. Without the promise of trickle-down economics or adequate social protection mechanisms, the market-led approach fueled urban fragmentation and left vulnerable communities behind. And urban eco-movements — creating parks, waterfronts and bike lanes — has triggered a contemporary phenomenon of “green gentrification,” either through the bulldozing of informal street vendors (Addis Ababa’s ongoing corridor development is one such example) or increasing property values and living costs leading to the displacement or exclusion of lower income groups.             

Principles for good city building  

The task here is not to define perfection or determine which model is better than the other. There are plenty of ideas, perspectives and arguments for what makes a good city. The aim is to lay out a process of how to arrive at a shared, co-produced vision of a good city. This process starts with principles for guiding that discussion. 

• Define a “good city” locally. Every city has its own history, politics and pressures. Does the city act as an important trade hub? Are the divisions of post-conflict still sustaining fault lines? Global models such as the “smart city” or “green city” can inspire, but they need translation into the local context. Recognize neighborhood differences and the legacies that still shape decision-making and bring to the surface “red lines” or non-negotiables. This grounding does two things: It legitimizes the conversation and builds trust between municipalities and residents, and it prevents imported ideals from crowding out the city’s realities before the discussion even begins.  

• Foster participation that matters. It is important to bring in the voices that are usually absent from the decision-making table — informal workers, renters, youth, people with disabilities, migrants — alongside and in dialogue with business groups, investors and utility operators, as well as the municipal representatives themselves. Use tools to bring in different voices (here are some examples of good public participation practices) and move into scenario planning with an understanding of where interests collide, which trade-offs are acceptable and what red lines must hold. Participation is also about communicating a shared vision in plain language and providing continuous feedback to residents. International cooperation can add value here by supporting facilitation and knowledge brokering and developing local capacities on this. 

• Lead with politics and power. Every step in the development of a city creates winners and losers. Use political economy analysis to map incentives, pinpoint potential blockages and assess where possible coalitions lie. Use the analysis to establish realistic entry points for what is politically possible in a city. Who gains if a market is redesigned or a bus lane is enforced — and who might block it or lose out? It is important to consider how a city fits within the wider constellation of power at the national level and the extent to which a city can make decisions on certain issues or whether approval is required from central government. A politics-first, finance-aware approach avoids heroic plans that stall in political processes or rely on empty budgets.  

• View the city as an inclusive system. A solution to any urban challenge requires a multi-sectoral approach and needs to consider multiple stakeholders across public, private and community partners. Informality is part of the urban system in many of the contexts where Helvetas works — often providing services, housing and jobs not offered by the formal sector. Ignoring informality will only bring partial results for urban transformation.  

• Learn across cities but avoid copy/paste tactics. For peer learning, choose cities that share constraints (decentralization, size, economy, risk profile) rather than only aspirations. Avoid policy tourism; what matters is how a local idea fits local incentives, institutions and budgets. This involves learning from cities within the same country, and beyond. Our Inclusive Cities for Nutrition project has led to rewarding exchanges between Mbeya (Tanzania) and Cox’s  Bazar (Bangladesh) and Zurich (Switzerland) on issues from school food programs to anchoring locally led food strategies in the urban policy landscape. 

• Measure impact based on residents’ perceptions and needs. Accountability should be to city residents, not only upwards to donors. Track their daily lived reality — of affordability, reliability and especially gendered experiences — to determine if infrastructure is accessible and residents feel safe using it. Embed indicators in municipal monitoring systems where they exist. And where they don’t, strengthen them through the project’s design.

Start from the real city 

The “good city” isn’t one that ticks all the boxes on a “best of” checklist; it’s how residents experience it. Ideas about urban ideals have shifted with politics and economics, and they will keep shifting. What endures is this: Cities work when residents can shape a shared direction and when institutions, finance and everyday systems line up behind it. 

For international cooperation in an era of tightened budgets, the directive is clear: Convene and broker rather than prescribe. Start with a locally led, participative and politics-first approach. Work within the existing system, treating informality as part of delivery. Learn by swapping tools, not slogans. And be accountable to residents, measuring outcomes they find meaningful in their daily lives. 

In short: Start from the real city and treat models as references, not recipes. Then the next “most liveable” headline won’t matter as much — because the people who live there will.