It is Time to Professionalize City Leadership

The creation of the MBA transformed corporate leadership by professionalizing management, creating a shared language of strategy and finance.

It did not eliminate failure: reading the business pages of any news publication reminds us that credentials are no substitute for culture and accountability. But it established something essential: a shared baseline of preparation, a common professional identity, and a global expectation that leadership at scale requires structured development.

It is time to do the same for cities. To create a professional career path for aspiring urban leaders to acquire the diverse skillset required by this uniquely challenging and consequential job.

More than half of the human population today is urbanized. By 2050 that figure will rise to nearly 70 percent. The world's cities generate 80 percent of global GDP. They are the largest repositories of individual wealth on the planet and the primary hubs of technological innovation. They are also the epicenters of our greatest challenges: inequality, climate vulnerability, infrastructure strain, and demographic shifts.

Cities produce 70 percent of global emissions and are marked by deep disparities in access to housing, healthcare, and education. They are both the engines of prosperity and the battlegrounds of sustainability.

Cities are more than clusters of infrastructure and services. They are dynamic ecosystems that must accommodate various social, economic, and environmental needs. This complexity is compounded by the rapid pace of change in urban environments and technology.

Yet dynamic change, the kind often praised in business circles, is difficult. Cities have multi-layered governance structures, creating slow decision-making processes and difficulty in coordinating new initiatives. Short-term political cycles limit long-term planning, while financial limitations and the high costs of overhauling legacy infrastructure deter action.

Additionally, resistance from stakeholders, regulatory barriers, and risk-averse attitudes make transformative change difficult. Overcoming inertia requires strategic, patient leadership. Leadership capable of navigating diverse interests, building consensus, and balancing immediate needs with long-term vision.

Modern city leaders need the negotiation skills of politicians and the strategic vision of CEOs, grounded in a dedication to public service. A deep-seated commitment to work every day to improve the lives of the people who live and work in the city.

Despite the scale of their responsibility, however, city leaders often arrive in office with no formal education to prepare them for the unique demands of running a modern city. Given the complexity of managing modern cities, it is clear that we require a new appreciation of city leadership: one that extends beyond traditional political or corporate frameworks.

The projected global demand for skilled urban leaders is extraordinary.

Today, around 600 cities have populations over one million. By 2050, that number will increase by as much as 50 percent, based on current projections. We are going to need to expand existing cities. We are going to need to build new cities. And we are going to need skilled professionals to manage them.

In 2024 I published a paper in Urban Sustainable Development, a book released by the Brazilian Center for International Relations in collaboration with the G20. In it I outlined a methodology for estimating the leadership gap this growth will create, accounting for new cities, expanding administrations, and attrition in existing roles.

The conclusion was that the projected need for trained urban administrators by 2050 could be as high as 290,000. This is a personal estimate, and I welcome scrutiny of the methodology. But even if the true number is half that, the scale of the challenge dwarfs anything our current educational infrastructure is equipped to address.

If that number seems insurmountable, then consider that, in any given year, there are around 250,000 people enrolled in MBA programs around the world. The figures are not directly comparable — one is an annual intake, the other a cumulative projection — but the disparity in ambition is real. We have built a vast global infrastructure to develop corporate leaders. We have built almost nothing comparable for the people who run our cities.

Although universities around the world offer programs in urban planning, civil engineering, and public administration, few provide a curriculum that prepares leaders to manage both the technical and socio-economic dimensions of the role simultaneously. The result is a persistent shortage of qualified urban leaders equipped for the demands of 21st-century cities. Mayors and administrators are too often required to learn on the job — at the expense of the millions of people depending on them to get it right.

At the Urban 20 Summit in Johannesburg in 2025, the Saudi Arabian delegation and the South African co-chairs introduced an initiative to address that gap: the Master in City Administration, a postgraduate qualification designed to do for urban leadership what the MBA did for business. The MCA will blend academic rigor with practical insights from former mayors and senior administrators. It will be globally scalable and locally relevant, combining a core curriculum with region-specific content, ensuring relevance for all cities, from the aging urban centers of Europe and North America to the rapidly growing cities of Asia and Africa.

This year, at the 13th session of the World Urban Forum in Baku, the initiative moved from proposal to program. Founding universities committed to delivering the MCA, with the first cohorts launching in September 2026. International organizations, city leaders, and government institutions aligned behind the effort. A coalition that had spent years making the argument began the work of delivering on it.

The MCA will not only prepare individuals. It will create a global network of urban leaders connected by common training, shared standards, and a collective commitment to cities — a network as consequential for cities as the MBA has been for corporations.

We think of infrastructure as concrete and steel: roads, bridges, and power grids. But leadership is infrastructure too. It is the invisible system that determines whether cities can plan wisely, execute effectively, and adapt creatively. The way we lead our cities will define the future of our civilization.

Cities are humanity's greatest invention. They are the places where we convene to live, learn, and solve problems collectively. We recognize the importance of a global ecosystem to train the executives who run our corporations. Now we must do the same for the men and women who run our cities.

The world has an MBA for business. It now needs an MCA for cities.