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The paper proposes a novel approach to dialogue with local stakeholders to maximise the shared value that can be generated by infrastructure investments for the benefit of urban communities. The approach proposes a method for deliberately activating synergies between infrastructure and complementary initiatives through the active engagement of public and private stakeholders. In many cases today, infrastructure is designed, financed and implemented as functionally unitary engineering works that meet a specific need, leaving synergies with complementary initiatives to be activated spontaneously. Moreover, the dialogue with local stakeholders is limited and reductive, aiming mainly at the exchange of some project information and consensus building, thus missing the opportunity to identify and mobilise those ideas, capabilities and resources that are always present within a community. In the proposed approach, infrastructure is the catalyst for a long-term vision and stakeholder engagement is the tool for identifying the synergistic initiatives that can be implemented with the participation of public and private actors to maximise value creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a five-step effective method for creating sustainable, thriving urban communities, from sky-is-the-limit creative mapping to polished final execution. The underlying belief is that although every urban area is different, the use of the proposed method enables, under certain circumstances, the creation of favourable conditions for sustainable and shared prosperity. Drawing from the author's two decades of high-profile experience as an urban regeneration expert, the paper offers comments and thoughts on each step, sharing some key lessons learned from real-life project examples. It shows how to identify a community's unique strengths and competitive advantages, as well as the needs, motivations, inequalities and weaknesses that can be fundamental ingredients for crafting a strong vision for its future. It also proposes how to ensure communities have real purpose and how a collaborative approach can deliver lasting tangible benefits in all contexts — physical, social and economic — and generate places where people are happy to build their lives. Finally, it touches on how to break silos, dissipate political resistance, and disrupt unproductive decision-making structures and traditionally inefficient procedures, for creating sustainable shared value. One of the crucial aspects highlighted is that the proposed method must be intended not as a process with a beginning and an end, but rather a continuous iterative long-term effort aimed at achieving and maintaining a virtuous condition. The implication is that, as the context continues to change over time, it is necessary to create the conditions for 'strategic urban agility'. This requires the adoption of a culture of flexibility in all regulatory, planning, design, construction and operational dimensions of an urban regeneration initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]