Reflections from the 2025 International Precinct Management Leadership Summit
By Brian Wright, Managing Director, UrbanMGT
When you’re the only delegate, alongside Cape Town colleagues from the developing world in a room full of precinct leaders from New York, Toronto, London, Tokyo, and Stockholm et. al, the comparisons get real, fast.
Last month, I had the privilege of attending the International Downtown Association World Towns Leadership Summit (precinct management) in Cape Town.
The purpose? To chart a global roadmap for strengthening precinct management leadership in the face of rising urban challenges, municipal service breakdowns, social distress, and rapidly shifting property markets.
UrbanMGT and colleagues for Cape Town were the only voices from the developing world in the room. That alone set the stage. But what followed was both sobering and affirming.
The Global Picture: How Big This Sector Really Is
A few figures that stood out:
- 2,500+ legislated managed precincts worldwide, where municipalities raise a levy on behalf of the precinct.
- USA: 1,200+
- England: 300+ (70 in Greater London)
- Auckland, New Zealand: 52
- Annual precinct budgets range from R40 million to R900 million+.
- Cape Town’s 52 CIDs collectively annual budget e R300 million
+, with the Cape Town l CBD alone at R100+ million.
These numbers reflect global scale of the sector. Yet despite world-class infrastructure and resources, global precinct leaders repeatedly raised the same three common challenges which are directly impacting on property values.
The Global Top 3
- Municipal Service Delivery Decline
Time and energy are being swallowed up lobbying political leadership for enabling policy and basic delivery. From Toronto to Tokyo and all cities in between, service demands are rising while municipal delivery declines. - Post-COVID Urban Strain
Homelessness has surged globally, often tied to addiction and economic displacement. Photos from San Francisco and Seattle painted a stark picture of urban decay and resultant impacts on property values. - Shifting Property Use
The shift to remote work and rise of e-commerce has is having a material negative impact on the demand for office and retail space particularly in CBD’s. As commercial buildings convert to residential use (often levy-exempt), precinct income drops, while service needs substantially escalates.
So, Where Does That Leave Us?
What I saw reaffirmed what we’ve long known on the ground here in KZN, that our past challenges have created a unique opportunity and necessity to drive innovation:
Nowhere else are first-world precincts being delivered in developing-world environments like they are in Greater Durban and Greater Ballito.
We’re not operating in locally enabling and secure policy environments, this is where the Cape Province and Cape Town in particular, has a jump on us. Instead, we faced with complexity at every level: municipal and provincial political uncertainty combined with declining service delivery, trust deficit between private and public sector, and national head offices cautious of investment in KZN.
And yet, we see the potential to unlocked significant prosperity for all in KZN when you consider the geospatial location, human resources and natural asset base of the province.
What is needed is more of the measurable value, whether it be brick and mortar or quality of life, that our team is driving in the Greater Durban and Greater Ballito managed precincts.
A case in point: as we grew and evolved, it became essential to codify management processes in software that would for our relentless innovation. So, we went to market looking for a software platform – well the short-story is nowhere else are first-world precincts being developed in development world environments.
And so took a big step up and built our own proprietary software on the Salesforce to support the delivery of first-world precincts in developing-world environments (more on this in a follow up article) None of the international precincts leaders I engaged with had developed or were using any software platform with the functionality we have.
This did not come as a surprise as it has become our baseline.
What Comes Next?
I’ll be sharing a series of reflections over the coming weeks, unpacking the major insights from this summit. These aren’t theoretical, they are practical, institutional and operational takeouts that matter to every managed precinct, every property investor, and every city stakeholder navigating deteriorating service delivery conditions.
We now have access to a network of like-minded professionals across eight countries. We’re sharing models, failures, fixes, and more importantly, learning what we can do better, together.
It’s one thing becoming a champion. The next challenge is staying there.
If you’re in the business of managing cities, or building value in places where people live, work, and invest, these are conversations we can no longer afford to sit out.
Brian Wright
Managing Director, UrbanMGT
