This report on Cities for All Ages was prepared by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director, as part of the Programme of Work and Budget of the OECD Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC). The report was carried out with the financial support of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) of Japan.
The report was co-ordinated by Andrew Lombardi, Policy Analyst, under the supervision of Camille Viros, Head of the Inclusive Growth in Cities Unit. The report was jointly drafted by a CFE team composed of Andrew Lombardi, Elizabeth Doherty, Thomas Kergonou Jimenez, Marion Lagadic and Camille Viros, with contributions from David Burgalassi, under the leadership of Aziza Akhmouch, Head of the Cities, Urban Policies and Sustainable Development (CITY) division, and Soo-Jin Kim, Deputy Head, in the CFE. The report benefitted from valuable inputs and comments by Nadim Ahmad, Rüdiger Ahrend, Kazuhiro Miyamoto, Tadashi Matsumoto, Ana Moreno Monroy, Cem Ozguzel and Eric Gonnard, in the CFE. Anthony Cox, Senior Policy Advisor at Ecologic Economics and former Deputy Director of the Environment Directorate at the OECD, provided a comprehensive and insightful review of the entire report.
Warm thanks go to Sachio Muto, Nobuyoshi Hasegawa, Shingo Iguma and Koichi Horita from MLIT for their excellent support and suggestions throughout the project, including facilitating interviews with experts, as well as Hiroko Suzuki and Yoshiyuki Miyoshi, previously and currently seconded from MLIT to the OECD, for their support.
Thanks are also extended to the experts from national and local governments, civil society, international organisations and academia who participated in interviews between September and November 2023, expert discussions in November 2023 and September 2024, the online workshop held in March 2024, and provided resources to support desk research, including Noriko Akita, Sidse Carroll, Hilda Carvajal, Jackson Chabot, Zuzana Cupkova, Thiago Herick de Sa, Chika Fujimitsu, Hideyuki Fuma, Tomita Fumiko, Robert Gaa, Tetsuji Goto, Julia Girardi-Hoog, Yoshinori Hiroi, Eider Inunciaga, Paul Irving, Atsushi Koresawa, Ákos Kristóf Csete, Shinya Kuno, Ren Ai Lim, Josephine Macharia, Taniguchi Mamoru, Anisa Mance, João Medeiros, Jennifer Molinsky, Kostas Mouratidis, Brendan Murtagh, Phannisa Nirattiwongsakorn, Fumihiko Omori, Akira Oshida, Liliana Ospina, Liliana Ramos, Jagruti Rekhi, Gemma Rojo, Carl Philipp Schuck, Zsófia Szaló, Sachie Uno, Anne Wagner, B. Aaron Weaver, Damla Yazar, and Sandra Zabala (see full list in Annex A). Their insights and contributions during these discussions were instrumental to framing this report’s best practices and key findings.
Chapter 1 of this report also benefitted from and expanded on findings of the OECD Regional Development Paper “Demographic change in cities: Trends, challenges, and insights from G7 economies” released in March 2024. A preliminary version of that paper was prepared for the G7 Japanese presidency in 2023.
Finally, thanks are extended to Jack Waters in the CFE for preparing the report for publication.