Helping Cities Choose Well and Deliver Better
An AI-native partner for urban ecosystems founded by people who have run cities, advise them and build the technology they use.
Two companies, one brand, helping cities succeed
Cities are asked to do more than their budgets allow, and to justify every choice long after it is made. We work with cities around the world on both halves of that problem: helping the people who make the decisions, and building the tools that make the reasoning defensible.
Our Vision: A world in which every city makes rigorous decisions to better serve its people.
Our Mission: To provide cities with independent advice, practitioner-led capability and evidence-backed recommendations.
Our advisory is delivered wherever a city is, our executive development is primarily online, and our pricing is tiered by income. Commitment, not resources, decides who we work with.
ADVISORY
Independent policy and strategy for local and national government.
CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
Online executive development for city leaders.
THE PLATFORM
AI platform that helps cities fund the right projects.
Five Things Only Top Urban Can Say
Mayors on the inside, not on an advisory board
Two former mayors are among our founders, with other former mayors in our network. They design the material, sign the advice and open doors.
AI-native from inception, not AI-retrofitted
Our advisory was designed around agents as team members, not chatbots layered onto an advisory pyramid.
Transparent about every interest
Our advice covers policy and strategy, not implementation. If a recommendation touches a business interest of ours, we disclose it.
One evidence base in what we do
What the platform learns sharpens the advice and refreshes the curriculum.
Built for every city, not only the best-resourced
Our income-tiered pricing and adaptable methods give emerging-market cities access to the same urban expertise as OECD capitals.
AI-native, Not AI-added
All three of our businesses were designed and built from day one around what AI can do, with the human-in-the-loop role deliberately defined.
Advisory — the team is composed, not staffed.
Traditional consulting firms rely on a pyramid: a partner supported by many junior staff. They have added AI to what they already did, which makes the same process faster but does not change it.
Top Urban Advisory is built around agent teams instead. Agents do the first-order work; a small human core orchestrates and signs. What that changes is not speed but structure.
Several ways of analyzing the problem
Different explanations of the problem are tested side by side, using the city's own data, plans and budgets, instead of settling on one too early.
Custom teams built for the problem
Each team is put together around what the problem needs, not around who is available.
Built-in challenge
We test our own conclusions by arguing the opposite case and asking what could go wrong, instead of relying on one partner's judgment.
Ongoing monitoring
Between steering meetings, we track the targets a city has committed to. We don't hand over a report and leave.
Our safeguards: every deliverable carries an AI-use appendix and a named human owner, agent outputs are verified against primary sources, and high-consequence decisions are never fully automated.
Capacity Development — designed by mayors, taught by professionals.
Most executive programs are filmed once and taught for years. The case studies age, the regulation moves, and nobody refilms a former mayor to fix it.
Top Urban Leadership Development, our flagship executive development program, is delivered primarily online, so participants develop without leaving the post that needs them. It is designed by former mayors and urban practitioners, who review every module and record the case studies. Named facilitators run the live sessions. AI does the production — drafted from a single controlled source, expert-reviewed, and signed off by a named person before release.
Designed by practitioners
Written and reviewed by people who have held the office.
AI-produced, expert-reviewed
No module published without named human sign-off.
Assessed by people
No grade and no completion decision is automated.
Evidence for sponsors
Cohort completion and capability data for the institutions that nominate participants.
Top Urban Capacity Development uses AI to reduce the cost of production and allows us to offer the program in multiple languages. It does not reduce the human accountability for what is taught or how it is assessed.
The platform — the reasoning is the product.
Cities are asked to justify every choice long after it is made, yet investment and supplier decisions are rarely backed by reasoning they can show.
Top Urban AI builds the urban intelligence platform. It helps cities prioritize investment and find trusted suppliers who can deliver them, with the reasoning behind every recommendation.
Top Urban AI is incorporated and licensed in the DIFC AI Campus, Dubai.
One evidence base, three businesses.
What our advisory sees in the field becomes case material for our capacity development program. What capacity development participants decide, back in their own cities, is the demand our platform was built to serve. What the platform learns from cities sharpens our advice and refreshes the curriculum.
Three businesses across two companies, drawing on one evidence base. In all three, the same limit applies. Machines draft; people choose. The decision, and the authority, stay with the city.
No single-product competitor has that loop, and it is the reason we can price access the way we do.
Who Is Behind It
Hazem Galal
Founder & CEO
Spent two decades at a Big Four firm, leading its global cities and local government practice for 15 of them and co-leading its smart mobility initiative. Advised national and local governments across five continents.
Mauricio Rodas
Co-founder
Former Mayor of Quito, Ecuador, where he delivered the largest infrastructure project in the city's history and led transformational initiatives in socioeconomic development and sustainability.
Jan Vapaavuori
Co-founder
Former Mayor of Helsinki and former Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs. Has run public procurement in one of the most tightly regulated environments in the world.
Akif Kamal
Chief Technology Officer, Top Urban AI
TOP URBAN AI
Previously co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of an explainable artificial intelligence company acquired by Apple.
Get In Touch
For advisory work, our capacity development programs, or the platform — write to us.
DMCC AI Centre, Uptown Tower, 12th Floor, P.O. Box 337780, Dubai, UAE