Cities must embrace strategic foresight and adaptive governance

Cities of all sizes across the Middle East are facing a mounting array of pressures – and, increasingly, outright crises. To navigate this new era, policymakers must go beyond just mitigating risk and adopt a new-age approach centred on strategic foresight and adaptive governance. That is according to a new vision paper from the World Governments Summit and Roland Berger.

The report paints a vivid picture of the accelerating pace of change confronting city leaders. “In today’s faster and ever-more interconnected world, characterised by the accelerated movement of people, goods and ideas, fragile global supply chains, instant communication and rapid flows of capital, the intensity of crises is amplified.”

Policymakers are increasingly required to manage multiple crises simultaneously, with risks often overlapping and reinforcing one another – a phenomenon generally known as a ‘polycrisis’.

For cities, this shift is particularly significant. Urban centres play a central role in economic activity, social cohesion and everyday life, while also being disproportionately exposed to systemic shocks, emphasises Roland Berger partner Mohamad Yamout. “Cities are facing an era defined by polycrisis: cascading, overlapping risks that increasingly test public services, infrastructure and institutional capacity.”

The report points, for example, to the cascading effects of a health emergency. “A health crisis can trigger an economic collapse, which in turn fuels political instability, undermines public trust and erodes social cohesion. While these effects are visible at regional or national levels, they are felt most acutely where human activity is most concentrated – in cities.”

In this polycrisis era, the report argues, traditional models of resilience – largely focused on recovery after shocks – are no longer sufficient. Cities must instead move beyond conventional resilience-based risk mitigation and embed forward-looking foresight into governance, planning and policymaking.

The Urban Foresight & Adaptability Framework

So how can cities achieve this shift? To provide guidance on the matter, the researchers developed a comprehensive framework designed to help cities across the Middle East anticipate, adapt to and actively shape the future amid converging and interdependent crises.

The framework calls for institutionalised urban foresight and adaptive governance, achieved by embedding scenario planning and continuous adjustment into day-to-day decision-making. “By embedding foresight into every layer of governance, cities can turn crisis into opportunity and set new global benchmarks for adaptability – moving from reactive crisis management towards proactive, future-oriented development,” Yamout noted.

At the heart of the ‘Urban Foresight & Adaptability Framework’ are five-pillars:

Adaptive Infrastructure & Urban Systems
Designing modular, climate-resilient and smart infrastructure supported by digital twins, real-time monitoring and predictive analytics.

Strategic Foresight & Governance Agility
Establishing foresight units, applying scenario planning and regulatory sandboxes, and strengthening cross-sector coordination to enable faster, more coherent responses to emerging risks.

Environmental Regeneration & Resource Foresight
Moving beyond mitigation toward regeneration through climate-risk modelling, renewable energy, nature-based solutions, circular economy measures and biodiversity-led planning.

Human & Social Well-Being
Prioritizing preventive health, lifelong learning, social inclusion and civic engagement to build cohesive, skilled communities capable of adapting to disruption.

Digital Intelligence & Innovation Ecosystems
Leveraging open data, AI, innovation hubs and strong cybersecurity to create cities that sense change in real time and act on it responsibly.

Examples from the region

The research spotlights several cities that are already demonstrating many of the success criteria outlined in the Urban Foresight & Adaptability Framework, including Dubai, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha.

In these cities, the authors note, “vision-led change and a technology-first mindset have already taken root”.

They point to major investments in transport networks, smart districts, renewable energy and digital government platforms, alongside flagship initiatives such as Green Riyadh, Masdar City, Dubai’s Clean Energy Strategy and Smart Qatar. Together, these initiatives demonstrate how infrastructure, environmental priorities and technology can be integrated at scale to build long-term urban adaptability.

Through these insights and the accompanying framework, the World Governments Summit and Roland Berger aim to enable policymakers across the Middle East to learn from these examples and apply the lessons to their own contexts – ultimately helping cities become more future-proof, resilient and economically sustainable places to live and work.

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