From Declaration to Delivery: Operationalising the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Coalition to achieve a more resilient Commonwealth

Last week the Commonwealth Association of Architects joined partners in Georgetown, Guyana, for the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Dialogue. Wilton Park hosted the Dialogue from 28 to 30 October in collaboration with the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Initiative (CSCI), IonQ and FormationQ. It took place in the days just before CHOGM 2026 in Antigua and Barbuda, and its title set the task: From Declaration to Delivery.

The Dialogue built on the 2022 Commonwealth Declaration on Sustainable Urbanisation, reaffirmed at CHOGM 2024, and on the findings of the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Coalition (CSCC) pilot. The scale of the challenge is clear. The Commonwealth’s urban population is expected to double to around two billion by 2050, and much of that growth will be in cities that already lack the infrastructure, institutions and skills to manage it.

Participants came from national and city government, the built-environment professions, academia, finance and insurance, technology and civil society. They agreed that the challenges are well understood. What is missing is the ability to bring planning, finance, technology, institutional capacity and implementation together. Discussions in the breakout groups looked at why urban projects fail. The reasons go well beyond a lack of capital and include weak or outdated legal frameworks, plans that are not linked to budgets or land, and too few skilled professionals in local government.

The main outcome was a proposal for a Commonwealth Cities Investment Catalyst. It would not be a new institution. Instead it would connect the capabilities that already exist among governments, planning institutions, investors, insurers, technology providers and development partners around priorities that countries set themselves, so that urban development plans become projects that can be financed and delivered. The Catalyst would start with a small number of pathfinders: countries or cities ready to show how integrated planning, finance and coordinated implementation can work together in practice, and to produce lessons that other member states can adapt. President Irfaan Ali of Guyana has since referred to the proposal in a statement to the Global Biodiversity Alliance.

Following completion of the Wilton Park dialogue, the discussion moves to the Commonwealth Business Forum in Antigua and Barbuda. Nada Hosking of FormationQ will chair a roundtable on Commonwealth Smart Cities, and Kelley Moore, Secretary General of the Commonwealth Association of Planners, will facilitate. The session will cover three connected themes: designing sustainable and liveable cities, technology as part of urban infrastructure, and the investment and partnerships needed to move from planning to implementation.

CAA President Dr John Brown will speak in the session on design. He will make the case that good design and commercial viability go together, that regenerating existing areas should come before new development, and that whole-life costs should be counted from the start. He will also stress a point raised repeatedly in Georgetown. For many developing and emerging economies the binding constraint is not only finance but planning and implementation capacity, meaning the laws, institutions and people needed to turn investment into places that last.

CAA, alongside its CSCI partners, looks forward to working with member states and partners to take the Catalyst and the first pathfinders forward beyond CHOGM.