The title of this paper is inspired by urbanist Jane Jacobs, "For a society to flourish, there must be a flourishing city at its core", quoted by Judith Rodlin president of of the Rockefeller Foundation in the introduction to the their book "Century of the City: No Time to Lose".

Taking this as the point of departure, Prof B M Evans explores Glasgow within the context of international mega trends observed through investigations he led for UN-Habitat and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in the preparation for Habitat-III (2016, 2022). Evans explored this further at the (sub) national scale in the research Scotland’s Urban AGE (2018, 2022) and at the city scale in work as Glasgow’s City Urbanist through the independent Place Commission research published as PEOPLE make PLACES (2023).

The international trends observed in the Habitat III investigations are common across geographical scales but the magnitude and intensity of interaction among the trends is influenced by the granularity and nature of trends at the regional and local levels that require a more nuanced lexicon and narrative for their different audiences and communities.