Urban Systems Practice

Cities are entering their most consequential decade.

Climate pressure, AI, demographic shift, new investment models, and a human return to nature-aligned systems are all reshaping how cities are planned, governed, and experienced, at the same time. Hikmah connects intelligence, imagination, and implementation so institutions build places that are resilient, valuable, and deeply human.

Designed for institutions pursuing resilient development, sustainable infrastructure, and measurable long-term impact.

What we do Start a conversation
Advisory · Intelligence · Cross-border delivery
Who we work with

Institutions shaping the next generation of cities.

Governments
Master Developers
Investors
Technology Platforms
Universities
International Organisations
Latest collaborations
Why now

Six shifts, read differently.

Most of the conversation about cities is framed as crisis. Read another way, response capacity has never been greater.

Climate accountability

Direction is now clear

Disclosure mandates ended decades of ambiguity. Readiness is now a solvable problem.

Capital & finance

Markets price what matters

Climate risk is entering valuations, lending, and insurance. Resilience finally has a return you can show.

AI

The foundations are increasingly being strengthened

BIM mandates mean the built environment now generates structured data at scale, and AI has moved from research into practice. The raw material and the capability arrived together.

Urban transformation

Ambition has scale behind it

City transformation programmes across the globe carry real institutional weight. The appetite to build differently is funded, mandated, and already under construction.

Nature

People are moving back toward living systems

Shade, water, soil, and canopy are re-entering the brief as infrastructure rather than landscaping, because residents, regulators, and valuers now all ask for them.

Urban diplomacy

Cities now negotiate for themselves

City to city agreements, network memberships, and direct partnerships are moving faster than national channels. Capability, capital, and standards increasingly travel between cities rather than down from states.

Six shifts, arriving at once. What most organisations are missing is the connective layer, the judgement that turns all six into decisions that hold up over decades. This is what designing cities of meaning requires, and it is our work.

People

A city is only as good as the daily life it makes possible.

What we do

Three territories
of work.

Many cities hold world-class strategies, yet struggle to translate ambition into lasting outcomes. We work in that gap, where strategy meets execution, at the level of whole systems: climate, governance, data, finance, and human experience. Evidence-led engagements, built to leave clients more capable than we found them.

Readiness
Do you know where you actually stand?

An honest, evidence-backed picture of your position on climate, ESG, digital maturity, and AI, with a clear path to where the market is going.

Developers · Municipalities · Insurers · AEC Firms
Transitions
Can you turn what's changing into advantage?

Policy shifts and new mandates converted into strategy you can implement, with value created across stakeholders rather than one.

Government Entities · Master Developers · Investors
Evidence
Is your knowledge built to compound?

Research frameworks, benchmark intelligence, and shared evidence infrastructure, for institutions that treat knowledge as an asset.

Universities · Standards Bodies · Non-Profits
Thought leadership

The conversations we're leading.

Services are the expression. Thinking is the foundation. Our work is published in the academic and policy record, and shaped by the questions below.

Publishing 9 October 2026
Edited volume · Springer Nature

Designing for a Changing Climate

A Science-based Path to Practical Actions

A framework for acting on climate through planning and design: risk assessment, nature-based and ecosystem-oriented approaches, design and technological innovation, and the governance pathways that decide whether any of it gets implemented.

Editors
Bao-Jie He (Chongqing University), Ali Cheshmehzangi (University of Queensland), Leila Mohaghegh Zahed (IIASA), and Misha Mittal (Hikmah Group)
Series
Urban Sustainability, Springer Singapore
Format
Hardcover, 490pp · ISBN 978-981-92-2396-1
Pre-order on Springer Nature
Upcoming
Questions the work keeps returning to
Cities as relationship systems
The meaning economy
AI for human-oriented cities
Designing belonging
Nature as infrastructure
Trust as urban capital
Future governance
Essays, research briefs, and further volumes follow from late 2026
About Hikmah

An ecosystem,
not a consultancy.

The word hikmah is Arabic for wisdom. Not wisdom derived from theory alone, but from practice, experience, the challenges that follow, and learning shaped through navigating them. Cities gain meaning when governance, infrastructure, climate, investment, and culture are woven through the lens of human experience and nature as one system rather than isolated disciplines, and few problems respect the boundaries of a single firm. We are lean by design, connected to advisors and partners across countries who bring this philosophy into practice.

Misha Mittal, founder of Hikmah Group
Founder

Misha Mittal

An urban systems strategist with nearly two decades advising governments, cities, and institutions across the UAE, UK, India, and emerging markets.

She led the establishment of City Advisory at Expo City Dubai. She brings mega-project and stakeholder experience from the Department of Municipalities and Transport, and works across global city networks on climate, ESG, and cross-border collaboration.

Institutional depth

The practice draws on deep relationships and knowledge across government, multilateral, and policy institutions, shaping how cities are planned and governed.

  • Department of Municipalities and Transport
  • Emirates Green Building Council
  • Expo City Dubai
  • Academy of Urbanism
  • Kenya Green Building Society
  • National Institute of Urban Affairs, India
  • UN-Habitat
  • World Bank
Global advisors

Lightbearers

Senior leaders and institutions in the built environment, climate finance, data science, and governance, engaged where their depth matters to guide the next generation of development.

By invitation
Strategic partners

Chosen deliberately

Standards bodies, technology providers, specialist firms, and universities, brought in when an engagement calls for capability we choose not to hold in-house. We are building the partner network deliberately, one mandate at a time. If you work in the built environment, climate finance, urban data, or governance, we would like to hear from you.

Legacy

The decisions made this decade will be lived in for a century.

Stay informed

Notes from the practice.

Occasional writing on cities, climate, and the systems beneath them. Sent when there is something worth saying, not on a schedule.

We use your address only to send these notes. No sharing, no lists, unsubscribe any time.

Connect

Work with us,
in the mode that fits.

Whether you hold a mandate, a research question, a stage, or a problem that fits nowhere neatly, the next step is a conversation.