Pioneering Places

The Davos Baukultur Alliance has launched 'Pioneering Places', a global movement to improve urban living environments for over 100 million people over three years. The inaugural cohort consists of six cities—Kuala Lumpur, Medellín, Montréal, Nairobi, San Francisco, and Utrecht—each implementing a specific project to model how holistic quality in policy, planning, and investment creates resilient communities. These projects range from automated rural water systems in Medellín and affordable housing in Nairobi to circular economy roadmaps in Montréal and adaptive reuse of vacant buildings in Kuala Lumpur.

• The Davos Baukultur Alliance aims to fill a market gap by creating integrated frameworks that ensure urban development provides long-term environmental, social, cultural, and economic value, involving 85 members across 140+ countries and 28 national governments.
• The Pioneering Places programme intends to expand over three years to improve the living environments of more than 100 million people by using the inaugural cohort cities as models for embedding quality across delivery and investment.
• Medellín is implementing a smart water treatment initiative to automate rural water systems and empower local communities, addressing unequal access to safe water in dispersed rural areas.
• Nairobi is focusing on an urban renewal programme to create a 1,000-hectare affordable housing pipeline across six priority sites, including Woodley, to address a significant shortfall in affordable housing caused by rapid urbanisation.
• San Francisco is developing a unified urban design and resilience framework for the Central Embarcadero to align Port, City, and federal partners in delivering flood and seismic resilience and climate protection.
• Utrecht is utilizing the Cartesius neighbourhood as a model for health-centred urban development, applying 'Blue Zone' principles and circular design to improve public health and life expectancy.
• Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, and Labuan are implementing the RENEW (Repurposing Adaptive Reuse) policy to transform over 110 vacant or under-occupied buildings into vibrant spaces, reducing carbon and preserving heritage.
• Montréal is implementing a Circular Economy Roadmap 2024–2030 to reduce embodied carbon in construction by embedding reuse and circularity into the development value chain and procurement systems.

APA

World Economic Forum (n.d.). Pioneering Places. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Pioneering_Places_Executive_Leaders_Guide.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Pioneering Places. n.d. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Pioneering_Places_Executive_Leaders_Guide.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Pioneering Places |url=https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Pioneering_Places_Executive_Leaders_Guide.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforumndpioneering, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Pioneering Places}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, url = {https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Pioneering_Places_Executive_Leaders_Guide.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }