Greg is author of 10 books and 100 reports on cities, investment and place-leadership. He is co-host of two podcasts, The Century of Cities and The DNA of Cities, and co-founder of the Urban Analytics Group, The Business of Cities. Hiis column, The Planet of Cities, is hosted by RICS, and he is Global Cities expert on the BBC World Service Series, My Perfect City. 

He has chaired more than 20 international advisory boards for individual cities that are reformulating their future investment strategies, long term plans, and governance, including Barcelona, New York, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Bogota, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Barcelona, Vienna, Turin, and Oslo. He has led comparative studies on Chinese, Canadian, Australian, European, North American, Latin American, Middle Eastern, South-East Asian, Caribbean, Nordic, and Indian, Cities.  

Globally, Greg's previous roles include Group Advisor, Future Cities & New Industries at HSBC (2018 -2022), Chair of the OECD Forum of Cities & Regions (1996 – 2016), Global Fellow on Cities at the Brookings Institution (2008-2018) and Global Fellow at the Urban land Institute (2006 – 2018). He was a Senior Advisor on urban investment at the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and the European Investment Bank.  Member of the WEF Future Council on Cities & Urbanisation, Bloomberg Coalition on Dynamic Cities, and Senior Advisor to The Bay Awards. 

In the UK, he was Lead Advisor on Cities & Regions at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (2004 to 2010). He has worked extensively with Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Manchester, the Core Cities, and Scottish Cities Alliance. He was Senior Advisor to the Open Cities Programme (2006), and chair of British BIDs (2010). He is chair of the Connected Places Catapult, and 3Ci. He is Hon Prof at Strathclyde University and teaches regularly at LSE and UCL. Prof at UCL and City Universities. He is Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS).

In London, he started work on refugee employment and as an inner city officer at LB Lambeth in 1988 and held leadership roles at The Local Economy Policy Unit (LEPU), The London Docklands Development Corporation, Greater London Enterprise, London Enterprise Agency, and London Development Agency, until 2004. From 2012 onwards he has held non-executive roles including Chair the of London Stansted Cambridge Consortium (now The innovation Corridor), board member of the London LEP for 10 years, and Transport for London (TfL)  for 9 years (2025). At TfL he was Chair of the Investment and Programme Committee, and founding Chair of the Land & Property Committee which oversaw the establishment of Places for London, TfL's property company.  He was a member of TfL's Finance and Elizabeth Line Committees. He is Senior Advisor at NLA, authoring 14 essays for the New London Agenda.    

Managing Director, Geografia Pty Ltd

Melbourne-based Dr Kevin Johnson is an economic geographer who works at the intersection of urban economics, data and AI. 

Early roles in government (covering creative-industries development and labour-market forecasting) honed his quantitative analysis and modelling. He later taught urban economics at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, helping emerging planners apply economic thinking to real metropolitan and regional decisions.

Since 2012, Kevin has led Geografia, a multi-award-winning urban analytics firm that uses large, high-frequency spatial datasets to explain economic, population, and social change, and, more importantly, to translate evidence into government policy or private investment decisions.

In 2017, he designed an app for Australian local governments that measures local economic activity from real bank-card transaction datasets. His teams now build and operate decision tools that combine this data with mobile-device pings, satellite imagery, internet job ads and property data to map trends, diagnose failure points and shape investable development options for public and private clients.

Geografia's toolchain uses AI across the workflow (classification, anomaly detection and natural-language guidance). This enables officials to interrogate the data and choose practical interventions for their cities, or guide investment decisions. Working hands-on with product interfaces has given Kevin a pragmatic view of what AI can and cannot do in city analytics and city development, as well as how to move city leaders from concept to policy to outcomes for their citizens.

Since 2020, Kevin has also advised UN-Habitat on urban monitoring. He first designed the Global Urban Monitoring Framework before advising on the Shanghai Index. More recently, he led the technical team that developed and deployed the Quality of Life Index as part of the Quality of Life Initiative.

Dr Sukaina Al-Nasrawi leads the sustainable urban development portfolio at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA). She advances policy and practice on urban resilience, the localization of global development agendas, urban transformation, and the transition to smart and inclusive cities that prioritize quality of life in the Arab region.

With over 20 years of experience in socio-economic development, gender equality, statistics, technology, and planning, Dr Al-Nasrawi has pioneered initiatives that connect global agendas with local realities. She introduced smart cities into regional policy debates, led the first Voluntary Local Reviews in the Arab region, and launched the Arab Mayors Academy to empower city leaders in tackling urban challenges. She has also served on international juries, including the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities.

Her distinguished record of publications spans topics such as smart sustainable cities, the multidimensionality of urban smartness, technology for development, the fourth industrial revolution, and gender equality. Her contributions to research and development have been recognized with multiple international awards.

Dr. Al-Nasrawi holds a PhD in Information Technology with a focus on smart sustainable cities. She is the author of one of the earliest global books on the sustainable smartness of cities, where she champions a people-centered approach to digital urban transformation.

Lead of Sustainable Urban Development Portfolio, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA)

Bartlett Professor of Cities and Regions, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London

Prof. Zeynep Enlil

Professor Emeritus in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Yıldız Technical University, Türkiye

Prof. Zeynep Enlil is Professor Emeritus in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Yıldız Technical University, Türkiye. Her teaching and research have focused on sustainable urban development, neoliberal urbanization, the history and theory of urban planning, urban regeneration, the role of cultural and creative sectors in urban and regional development, and urban conservation and tourism.

She has led and contributed to major projects shaping Istanbul's planning and policy landscape, including the 2006 Istanbul Metropolitan Plan (culture, heritage, and tourism sectors), the Istanbul Cultural Heritage and Cultural Economy Inventory Project funded by the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency, and the Istanbul Tourism Master Plan. She also acted as an external advisor to the Istanbul Vision 2050 Action Plan on heritage and cultural policy. Internationally, she has been an active partner in collaborative research, leading teams in research consortia funded under JPI Urban Europe and Horizon 2020/ERA-NET frameworks. She currently serves on the Management Committee of the COST-Action project Global Network on Cultural Heritage Conservation Under Climate Change.

Prof. Enlil has also been deeply engaged in advancing planning education and professional practice. She served as Vice President of ISOCARP (2005–2011), where she was responsible for the Young Planning Professionals Program. She has been a member of ICOMOS Turkey since 1998 and served on its National Committee (2021–2024). She was appointed to Türkiye's UNESCO Tangible Cultural Heritage Committee (2011–2014), the Advisory Board for Istanbul's UNESCO World Heritage Sites (2017–2019), and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Pergamon UNESCO World Heritage Site. At the European level, she has been a member of the AESOP Council of Representatives and the Excellence in Education Board. Globally, she chaired the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN) from 2022 to 2024.

Author of numerous publications, including several books, she is also a frequent international speaker, with keynote lectures delivered across Europe, the United States, China, North Africa, and Australia.