The cities are not waiting, and Shanghai just hosted the reason why

Shanghai knows how to host a conference. There were banners, nameplates, and a sea of translators navigating diplomatic poetry into seven languages simultaneously. But underneath all the organization of the Global Mayors Dialogue and 2025 Shanghai International Friendship Cities Cooperation Forum, something serious – and surprisingly hopeful – was happening.

Here's the truth: the cities are where the action is. Nation-states squabble, some stall, some rapidly change course. Cities on the other hand – where 70 percent of emissions happen and most of humanity lives – are out here trying to keep the lights on and the rivers from catching fire. And for four days in May, Shanghai turned itself into a kind of a "municipal UN", but for people who are charged with actually getting things done.

Cities are on the front lines

This year, mayors and representatives from 26 cities, from places as different as Marseille, Los Angeles, Windhoek Liverpool, Cork, Havana, Casablanca, and Rio took the stage around a common existential threat. Landslides in Rio, mega wildfires in Los Angeles, and rising sea levels in Shanghai. Climate change is real, and cities aren't waiting for Geneva to sort it out.

Michèle Rubirola, First Deputy Mayor of Marseille, gave a quote that deserves to echo in city halls everywhere: "This transition to sustainability will only succeed if it is socially just."

For Marseille – a port city straddling Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean – climate policy isn't just carbon math. It's solidarity. Rubirola reminded the forum that cities stand on two front lines: the front line of ecological vulnerability, and the front line of innovation. And the cities that thrive will be the ones that ensure no one is left behind – "that every neighborhood, every resident, every young person, every worker can be both an actor in and a beneficiary of this transformation."

Her remarks felt less like a speech and more like a moral architecture for the future – a reminder that the green transition must be human at its core. In Marseille, this means transforming schoolyards into heat-refuge zones, training young people as carbon literacy ambassadors, and rewriting city planning to prioritize adaptation and equity.

She even invoked Wendell Berry – "The Earth is what we all have in common" – and called the climate crisis a "cultural battle as much as a political one."

Noufissa Ramhane, Vice Mayor of Casablanca, reminded the forum of the stakes outside comfortable talking points: "For us, cooperation is not optional – it's survival. Cities like ours need these exchanges to remain resilient."

Naman Morales Musalem, Vice Governor of Havana, added an edge of hard-earned humility: "We bring the knowledge of doing more with less. Sustainability is not a slogan for us – it's our daily method."

And in a moment of dry, brilliant defiance, Windhoek Mayor Ndeshihafela Larandja declared, "We are not just recipients of aid – we are co-creators of global solutions. Ask the next person who's mapping floodplains in the desert."

Burned cities, clear visions

Dilpreet Sidhu, Deputy Mayor of International Affairs for Los Angeles, brought the receipts. Her city, recently blanketed in wildfires, isn't just rebuilding – it's rebuilding smarter. Streamlined permits for fire-resistant, all-electric homes. Grid upgrades. No Olympic white elephants – they're using what they've got and making it greener.

And then there's the LA-Shanghai Green Shipping Corridor. Yes, a green corridor between the busiest ports on Earth is now a real thing. Methanol-powered ships. Shared emissions data. Not a PowerPoint fantasy – ships have already docked.

The youth need to lead today, not tomorrow

Most conferences treat young people like decoration: throw a hashtag on it, maybe let them clap at the end. Not here. Victoria Woodards, Mayor of Tacoma, and Merja Narvo-Akkola, Deputy Mayor of Espoo, showed what happens when you actually give teenagers a seat at the table – and a vote.

In Espoo, Finland, the youth council isn't a sideshow. It's embedded in city governance, with speaking rights and they control a portion of the city's budget. In Tacoma, high-schoolers are designing the city's bike lanes, advising on climate justice, and helping shape city policy from the ground up.

Global cities have taken the sub-theme of activating the youth quite seriously, moving it beyond idealism into actual logistics of how to get this done.

Dan Boyle, Lord Mayor of Cork, summed it up perfectly: "We need to look at governance not as an act of authority, but an act of care."

Shanghai's pivot

Shanghai didn't just host the conference. Shanghai anchored it. The forum was equal parts diplomacy, urban hackathon, and therapy session for municipalities trying to aspire towards progress.

While it didn't shout about itself, Shanghai's presence was unmistakable – whether as co-architect of the transpacific green shipping plan, or as a city showing real curiosity about youth empowerment models from abroad. It's a pivot: from transactional trade diplomacy to something deeper, slower, more reciprocal.

As Rubirola of Marseille put it, cities need to cooperate "beyond continents and political systems, around common values, and with the courage to speak on behalf of future generations."

That the future of international cooperation might not be in policy white papers or five-star summits – but in the way a small city in Laos, like Vientiane under Governor Athsaphangthong Siphandone, figures out its first BRT line. Or how Marseille is deploying public misting systems and shaded infrastructure in heat-vulnerable neighborhoods. Or how 16,000 EV chargers popped up in LA since last year.

In the end, the Global Mayors Dialogue wasn't just another forum. Shanghai staged a working prototype of what international cooperation might actually look – cities swapping hard-won lessons, openly sharing new sustainable technology concepts, and highlighting how youth are being activated around the world in different ways.You could say these are just "speeches", but really... this is shared infrastructure around the life and death crisis of modern times. Across languages, time zones, and political systems, one message rang clear: cities aren't waiting for the world to change – they're rigging the scaffolding now.

And Shanghai? This city is anchoring the table, joined by what can only be called legends from across the globe – each acting with courage, pragmatism, and one eye fixed firmly on what must be built – to avoid an untenable future already taking shape: one defined by catastrophic human suffering and global injustice, by collapse, inequity, and tragic, irreversible loss.