The Accelerate The City competition invited designers across the world to engage in an effort to design a more resilient urban future. Following a three step process, designers were challenged to: 1) Pick any city across the world; 2) Pick a major issue in that city; 3) Design a more resilient future addressing that issue.

The responses to this challenging brief are a testament to the ingenuity, imagination, and visionary brilliance that we as designers can produce with a common goal of creating a safer, more equal, more sustainable built environment. With over 120 entries from 16 countries submitting 50 entries, the response of our community is also another sure sign of the global nature of the challenges we face, and the endless possibilities of engaging with designers across countries, regions, and continents. 

We wish to thank all entrants for their efforts, and our jury panel of Michael Grove (Sasaki), Tom Benson (MIT Senseable City Lab), Emma Campbell (Queen’s University Belfast), and Ralf Alwani (Urban Scale Interventions).