He is chair of the Connected Places Catapult (CPC), the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport and place-leadership, and Chair of the UK Cities Commission for Climate Investment (3Ci) which convenes city leaders and urban investors to finance a just net zero transition. He is a Board member of Transport for London (TfL) and the London LEP. He chairs TfL’s new Land and Property Committee that oversees TfL low carbon property and housing company (TTLP). He is a member of the WEF Global Future Council on Cities & Urbanisation and a member of the Bloomberg NEF Council on Cities. He is Hon Prof of Urban Innovation at Strathclyde University and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is author of 10 books and 100 reports on cities, innovation, investment and place-leadership. His monthly column:
The Planet of Cities, is hosted by RICS. He is Global Cities expert on the BBC World Service Series,
My Perfect City.
Greg is a world expert on cities, urban innovation, investment, and the net zero transition. Over 35 years, he has worked with more than 300 cities, 40 national governments, 20 multilateral institutions, and multiple global corporates and investors. His previous roles include Group Advisor, Future Cities & New Industries at HSBC Investment Bank, Chair of the OECD Forum of Cities & Regions, Global Fellow on Cities and Metropolitan leadership at the Brookings Institution, and Global Fellow on Urban Investment at the Urban land Institute. He was Lead Advisor on Cities to the UK Gov, and was Executive Director of the London Development Agency and Managing Director of Greater London Enterprise. He has been a senior advisor on urban investment to the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and the European Investment Bank.
He has chaired more than 20 internal advisory boards for individual cities that are reformulating their future investment strategies, long term plans, and governance, including New York, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Sydney, Auckland, Barcelona, Vienna, and Oslo. He has led comparative studies on Chinese, Australian, European, North American, Latin American, Middle Eastern, Chinese, ASEAN, and Indian Cities. Since 2020 he has been tracking the impact of the COVID pandemic on 100 cities globally, and has developed a unique framework for assessing the post-pandemic city.
