One City is a group of independent urbanists who seek to help people and their organisations build communities, neighbourhoods and cities that work for all.

We partner with community organisations, government, international agencies, private companies, NGOs, and anyone else who shares our goal. In such partnerships, we aim to help build strategies and systems via actual programmes and projects, not abstract ideas.

One City’s associates have broad and mutually supportive capabilities. Our collective focus is on urban management with a special emphasis on civil society, especially organizations of the poor, and how their interactions with formal sector stakeholders can be strengthened and supported.

Our activities are guided by a set of principles.

• Sustainable urban solutions require capacity building and ways to transfer the knowledge generated by practical programmes and projects. We help:
  • Organisations to assess their capacities and build on them;
  • Institutions to map their internal and external systems and relationships, and strengthen them;
  • To design and implement training programmes based on on-the-ground capacities and institutional relationships;
  • Develop peer-to-peer methods to share knowledge; and
  • To mobilise and manage resources and finances.

• We focus on mobilising specialist urbanist skills for programs and projects, including:
  • Integrated Development Planning
  • Urban design
  • Land development
  • Local area planning

• We support and pursue practical implementation and assessment of actions for change, especially:
  • Sustainable livelihood development
  • Private/people/public partnerships
  • Project management
  • Project assessment and documentation

One City is based in Cape Town, South Africa but has a national and trans-continental reach.