We are pleased to make available the last PASCAL Observatory Briefing Paper from the Reimagining Inclusive Economic Futures, Learning Cities Network (LCN). It has been written by Shilpi Roy, University of Khulna and Michael Osborne, University of Glasgow.

Cities are facing a number of major challenges which they seek to address in their attempts to ensure a sustainable economic future. The list is a long one. They have to recover from the effects of the COVID pandemic in a context of global concerns about the impact of climate change, reaching net-zero carbon emissions, the impact of digitalisation and artificial intelligence, migration, the emergence of new industries and the decline of some traditional patterns of employment. 

All of these have implications for the future economic development of cities and issues which Learning Cities need to address. The implications and the work of this LCN are reported in this paper, which is attached.