102 Examples of City Issues

John Spacey, June 13, 2021

City issues are problems that can be addressed by a city with its strategy, decision making, spending, operations, design and policy. These are typically shaped with a process of politics, city administration and community engagement. City issues can be contentious due to differing interests, positions, lifestyles, worldviews and needs. The following are common examples of city issues.

Accessibility	Activity Centers
Affordable Housing	Air Pollution
Airports & Aviation	Biodiversity
Brownfield Sites	Burial Space
Childcare	Circular Economy
City Culture	City Funding
City Services	City Spending
Climate Risk	Commercial Regulations
Community Engagement	Consumer Protection
Corporate Accountability	Corruption & Cronyism
Crime	Cycling Infrastructure
Depopulation	Digital Infrastructure
Disaster Resilience	Dispute Resolution
Drainage	Earthquake Risk
Economic Development	Economic Problems
Education	Employment
Energy Efficiency	Energy Resilience
Environment Problems	Exercise & Fitness
Festivals & Events	Fire Safety
Flood Risk	Food Security
Freedom of Movement	Government Accountability
Healthcare	Heritage Conservation
Historic Preservation	Homelessness
Housing Quality	Housing Standards
Inclusive Communities	Inclusive Urban Design
Industrial Sites	Information Security
Infrastructure	Land Use
Maintenance	Nature Conservation
Neighborhood Culture	Night Economy
Noise	Overpolicing
Overpopulation	Overtourism
Parking	Play Streets
Policing	Poverty
Privacy	Procurement
Property Values	Public Access (e.g. to a beach)
Public Health	Public Housing
Public Space	Public Toilets
Quality of Life	Recreation Facilities
Rights & Freedoms	Safety & Security
Senior Support	Social Infrastructure
Sports Facilities	Sports Teams & Leagues
Standard of Living	Storm Risk
Taxation	Tourism
Transparency	Transportation
Urban Design	Urban Forests
Urban Greening	Urban Growth
Urban Heat Islands	Urban Sprawl
Visitor Infrastructure	Walkability
Waste Management	Water Quality
Water Security	Waterfront & Waterways
Youth Activities	Zoning

Activity centers are lively areas of commercial activity such as a downtown or a neighborhood dotted with cafes and other neighborhood services.

A brownfield site is land that has been polluted, often a former industrial site.

Circular economy refers to corporate responsibility to reuse and recycle everything that they produce instead of shifting this burden to cities that often have no capacity to recycle most materials.

Transparency refers to the right of residents to review all city activities and spending.

Community engagement is the principle that city government not make decisions in isolation but rather open strategy and decisions to meaningful public review.

Corporate accountability is the principle that a city require firms to pay for any damage to a city such as water or air pollution.

Inclusive communities refers to the prevention of separation and segregation whereby people are made to feel unwelcome in an area based on their socioeconomic status or identity.

Inclusive urban design refers to the design of places to be useful to all people. For example, a street that is accessible and useful for different modes of transport, play and recreation.

Night economy refers to the vibrant culture of a city at night such as concert halls and pubs.

Privacy refers to the right of residents not to be aggressively and arbitrarily monitored and recorded by a city.

It is a common failure to confuse issues with solutions. For example, a city that assumes it needs to be a smart city instead of looking for the best way to solve actual problems.

The way that an issue is framed is important. For example, disaster management implies that you will wait for a disaster to damage a city and then respond. Disaster resilience implies that you will plan and engineer a city to not be damaged in the first place.