Publications 

2024 

Kılkış, Ş., Bjørn, A., Bai, X., Liu, J., Whiteman, G., Crona, B., Andersen, L. S., Hasan, S., Vijay, V., & Sabag, O. (2024). City–company collaboration towards aligned science-based target setting. Nature Sustainability. 

“We expect that upscaled efforts regarding proactive influencing and collaboration among key cities and companies will motivate greater action across many others with positive cascading effects at the national and international levels globally.” (link)

This paper is the first to scientifically investigate and draw attention to the transformative potential of city-company collaboration, especially when co-located cities and companies adopt science-based targets. The potential for two-way proactive influencing between cities and companies is demonstrated by measuring GHG reductions across the top 200 cities and 500 companies. The study shows the impact of co-locating cities and companies with ambitious targets; if an ambitious company is based in an ambitious city, GHG reductions are significant. The impacts of adopting science-based climate targets are also assessed, showing that science-based targets lead to greater GHG reductions compared to plain targets. A similar approach was taken to see whether aligning co-located cities and companies could protect freshwater security if science-based targets are adopted. Fresh water security was chosen to demonstrate how impacts on ESBs can be positively impacted by city-company collaboration (fresh water being one of the ESBs). Analysis of the current state of city–company collaborations shows that there are many potential points of strategic collaboration that could accelerate the maintenance and sustenance of ESBs.Collaboration of cities and companies towards reducing the human impact on our environment will contribute towards keeping the earth safe and just for humanity.

Bai, X. 2024. “A Case for Altruistic Cities.” Science 386(6722). 

 "Achieving deeper and more meaningful intercity cooperation requires altruistic cities—cities that can act with genuine altruistic intent, willing to reach out and help others even in the absence of immediate reward, with the knowledge that once they take the lead, others are likely to follow suit. These cities need to be identified, encouraged, and supported. (link) 

Intercity cooperation and networking are currently limited in depth. Identifying and supporting altruistic cities would help enhance meaningful intercity cooperation. While altruism is a characteristic observed in biological entities, Bai argues that cities have characteristics akin to a superorganism,  and cities do exhibit altruistic behaviours. Bai states that “drawing on concepts from biological altruism can enrich our understanding of city behavior within urban networks” provided the organism metaphor is used flexibly. Altruism is defined as a social behaviour that benefits others at the upfront cost of the performer of the behaviour, with the possibility of enhanced cooperation and an increased likelihood of future survival. Furthermore, the altruistic behaviour of some front runner cities will likely encouraging other cities to do so. However, the cost of an altruistic act by a city may distributed unequally at the expense of the vulnerable, and cities operate on short-term planning which makes meaningful cooperation between cities harder. Nonetheless, the altruistic behaviour of cities could increase cooperation across several issues and can help us all prepare for climate-related hazards and other challenges of the near future.