We work with city and regional governments, mayoral and policy advisors, local councils, architects and master planners on the questions that shape healthier, more equitable urban environments.
Cities: Policy & Practice Lab is an independent firm that brings academic research and applied advisory work together for the institutions that govern, design and shape cities and regions.
We work in the space between policy mobilities scholarship and the daily realities of council officers and city advisors — where good ideas from one place have to be translated, defended and delivered in another. Our clients commission us when a question is more difficult than a standard consultancy brief, and when the answer needs both intellectual seriousness and a route into practical action.
We are deliberately small, deliberately specialised, and deliberately independent.
Comparative studies, scoping reviews and evidence syntheses on the questions cities and regions are wrestling with — drawn from academic literature, primary interviews, and direct case material.
Short, sharp written work for senior decision-makers. Designed to be read in twenty minutes and to leave the reader with a defensible position and a route forward.
Convening, facilitation and consultation across communities, council teams, design partners and political leadership — held to a standard that produces decisions, not just dialogue.
Ongoing strategic counsel to mayoral teams, regional and council leaders, master planners and design practices. Sometimes formal retainer, sometimes a phone call when it matters.
Our work concentrates in a small number of related areas where evidence, governance and the lived city meet. We hold these themes in view because the places we work with cannot afford to treat them as separate problems.