Thure Krarup's work helps bridge the gap between ambitious urban regeneration projects and the patient capital they need. At Urban Partners, a European urban investment company, he is Head of Global Public Affairs and Policy, where he supports the capital products that let pension schemes and sovereign wealth funds invest in city regeneration.

We sat down with him to discuss what it means to be a progressive developer and which cities are leading the way in enabling them.

Where does the capital for CityMaking sit, and what role do you play in moving it?

There is a lot of capital out there. It gets thrown around as a cliché in every Climate Week discussion, but it is also extremely true. Billions and trillions sit in global pension schemes and sovereign wealth funds. Our role is to be the bridge between that long-term capital and the needs and demands of cities as they evolve over time. New challenges keep arriving: affordability is the biggest one currently, then resiliency, then urban regeneration. We create the capital products that make it possible for those long-term investors to get engaged.

What makes sustainable urban regeneration attractive to an investor, and how do you sell it?

First, the scale of the product. We are talking about very large plots, and the whole premise of the investment vehicle is that we can turn these areas into well-functioning neighborhoods. The scale at which you can create impact is what is attractive, and there is a great deal of public good in it, because you genuinely help create cities that function. You know it when you pass through a well-regenerated area. Nordhavn in Copenhagen is one. King's Cross in London is another.

Urban Partners is a Copenhagen firm. When you look beyond the Nordics, where do you go?

A layer of cities is doing extremely well, and those are easy to pinpoint, like the Nordic capitals. Those are likely to be in the first round, where we'll start, because those are the cities we know. But many secondary cities could be extremely interesting for various reasons. Everyone speaks about Manchester in the UK, Stuttgart in Germany. And then there are probably the up-and-comers that could be interesting for other reasons, where you could also think about blended financing.

C40 Cities has announced the winners of the fifth Youth Reinventing Cities competition, a global design challenge funded by the Holcim Foundation that puts students and young planners in front of real urban sites.

This year, 160 multidisciplinary teams from 80 universities worked across ten cities: Amman, Barcelona, Bogotá, Bucharest, Chicago, Jakarta, Lagos, Lisbon, Nairobi, and Rome.

For the cities involved, the exchange runs both ways. In Bucharest, winning team URBAN ROOTS took on Pantelimon, a residential complex, with Identity Nodes: a proposal to turn the spaces between apartment blocks into small public hubs, each with its own use — a dog-walking area, chess tables, a therapeutic garden, a permaculture plot beside the local school.

"For a city, working directly with young people on a real site is very different from simply asking them what they think about the future," says Rareș Hopincă, Mayor of Bucharest's 2nd District. "Here, they were given a real challenge and the opportunity to develop real solutions. At the same time, city officials had the chance to see the neighborhood through a different lens."

The European Urban Regeneration & Housing Summit is taking place this week in Copenhagen, and the Holcim Foundation is on the ground to gather insights. We are joined by delegations from 17 cities and are hosted by C40 Cities, the City of Copenhagen, and Urban Partners for discussions on strategic planning, affordable housing, and public space.

The Danish capital is a place that citymakers can learn a lot from. The municipality neared bankruptcy in the early 1990s, and within a generation the city rebuilt itself through partnerships in which the public sector and private firms shared responsibility for the results. Engineers Ramboll, urban innovation hub BLOXHUB and sustainable investment firm Urban Partners named that method ‘The Copenhagen Way'. 

In our interview with Signe Kongebro (pictured), Ramboll's Global Director of Future Resilient Design and a member of the Holcim Foundation Board, she gives one word for what made it work. "The word 'trust' came up a lot in all these conversations we have had with more than 120 urban stakeholders," says Kongebro. Read our conversation with Signe Kongebro on how Ramboll helped shape the Copenhagen Way and the role trust played in the process.