Sarah Lynn Rees recently delivered the opening remarks at the 2026 Living Cities Forum. The theme of this year’s event was Cities Made with Care, with a terrific line-up of speakers exploring the way our cities are being shaped by political priorities, financial pressures, climate change and cultural shifts.

A key focus was the way that every act of city-making influences who benefits, who carries risk, and ultimately, how people live, move and belong.

Housing sits at the centre of these dynamics: a system connecting infrastructure, governance, culture and equity. It raises fundamental questions about who decides, who belongs and who benefits. At the same time, sustainability discourse can become reduced to compliance and checklists, limiting ambition and preventing genuinely regenerative outcomes.

The Forum placed design at the centre of these conversations, challenging conventional approaches to housing and city-making. By reframing housing as the connective tissue of urban life, it encouraged systemic thinking, surfaced hidden trade-offs and created space for new ideas about how we can build cities that withstand pressure while remaining genuinely worth living in.

"The systems that govern how our cities are designed and cared for were written by humans, therefore humans can change them if we care enough, so let’s care" – Sarah Lynn Rees.

Image by Marie-Luise Skibbe.