Paper short abstract:

The time is ripe for businesses to take the lead on sustainability efforts to ensure urban livability. As businesses are embracing alternative ways of creating wealth, they can leverage their position to synergize wealth creation, human development, and sustainability.

Paper long abstract:

The time is right for US business to pivot and focus its global leadership role on urban livability as the key to a sustainable future for humanity and the planet. This assertion is based on four factors (not necessarily in this order):

1) The New Urban Agenda (which basically lays the things that we are arguing for in the current paper) is a culmination of decades of multilateral, multisector effort to focus development on urban sustainability for the future of humanity and the planet;

2) The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a platform for generating the kind of knowledge, technology, and products that synergize wealth creation, human development, and sustainability. There is wide will and hope to “save the world” through a new era of business.

3) The “shareholder growth machine” is widely perceived as no longer viable and is actually part of the non-sustainability problem. The Business Roundtable Statement and growth of ESG investing – despite recent challenges -- has changed the business climate away from glorifying greed and towards creating wealth for the flourishing of humanity and the planet.

•Business is already pivoting away from rapacious capitalism (four things to change)

•Business can leverage this pivot to continue economic growth on a livable cities/sustainability platform

•Sustainability needs to reprioritize humanity and the planet

4) Public trust in business is relatively high compared to government, the press, and other institutions. This has changed dramatically from a time when public trust in business was at an all-time low.

Keywords: livable cities; human capabilities; ESG; sustainability; CSR