This policy report, entitled ‘Global Sustainable City-Regions,’ covers the work developed by the lecturer, Dr Igor Calzada, MBA, FeRSA, as the editor of the publica- tion and students of the second edition of the Master course MSc in Leadership for Global Sustainable Cities from September to December 2016. Specifically, this policy report follows a two-sequential-module structure: • The first module, entitled ‘Global Cities: Sustainability and Society,’ consists of six methodological units. • Thereafter, the second module, entitled ‘Public Policy, Governance and Strategic Change in Cities,’ consists of five methodological units. The policy report focuses on three urban global issues in a comparative basis. The MSc was developed in a team-based dynamic by applying qualitative action research methodologies to understand and interpret each case and to benchmark and contrast with other cases that addressed the same global urban issue. The cases were selected jointly by the lecturer and the students in a dynamic process in order to achieve a suitable selection of cases that would allow them to: • arrange groups around one specific global urban issue, • compare cases around the same specific urban issue, and • produce a full case study by applying the two-sequential-module methodology. • Transformative Smart Cities: In recent years, the smart city paradigm has gained traction in urban policy and governance. Underlying the smart city discourse is the techno-utopian belief that the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is imperative to confront the challenges of urbanization and sustainable development. Although, little has been researched about the differences between this paradigm and its consequences in the Global South and in the Global North. In addition to this, since the smart city as a buzzword has conquered policy agendas worldwide, a transformational push is occurring in some innovative cities and regions worldwide. This urban issue called ‘Transformative Smart Cities’ is explained comparatively through five cases as follows: Stockholm, Kolkata, Masdar, Bengaluru, and Seoul. • Changing Social Innovation: Urban issues are usually complex and interconnected phenomena. Poverty, political conflicts, environmental awareness, mobility and transport mechanisms, geopolitical path-dependence, ethno-political unrest, digital connectivity and self-determination could be researched from the social innovation changing perspective. The capacity to think across and between as well as within the thematic factors is crucial. Likewise, a clear understanding of the way in which different disciplines can contribute to a step change in delivery against these changing challenges is therefore required. Ultimately, an awareness of the underlying factors and contexts (including social, political, economic, cultural, technological and historial), interdependencies, synergies, tensions and trade-offs that promote, obstruct or even reverse delivery against social innovation, both individually and collectively are key to understand changing dynamics in city-regions. This urban issue called ‘Changing Social Innovation’ is explained comparatively through six cases as follows: Berlin, Belfast, Malawi, Hong Kong, Helsinki, and Glasgow
