10 US cities paving the way for the future by investing in technology, sustainability, and infrastructure

10 US cities paving the way for the future by investing in technology, sustainability, and infrastructure

If city leaders across the country learned anything from the past year, it's the value of resilience. 

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed cracks in infrastructure, posed mobility challenges, and revealed a digital divide. The places that have fared the best are the ones that have been investing in the future, specifically in areas like digital transformation, manufacturing, sustainability, infrastructure, and innovation. 

"I don't think we talk about resilience enough," Diana Bowman, co-director of the Center for Smart Cities and Regions at Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society, told Insider. "Resilience talks about our capacity to respond in a quick way to address whatever those external challenges are."

While investing in technology and infrastructure is key for cities of the future, Bowman said that resilience also depends on strong partnerships across the public, private, and local university sectors. 

"One of the things that we've seen in this last 12-month period is if you take your eye off the ball at any single one of these, then your ability to have a fully engaged school system, fully engaged workforce is really challenged, and everybody suffers as a consequence of that," she said. For example, the influx of people working and learning from