Strategies that transform urban areas into more sustainable and resilient future states will be defined as part of a collaborative process involving all key stakeholders, from public and private organisations to (representative) private individuals. This will require new collaborative governance and policy-making frameworks that ensure productive, creative and co-operative engagement, especially as regards the increasing importance of ‘real-time‘ in urban governance and management, e.g. in the face of the growing importance of extreme events. The utilisation of big data, new enabling technologies and methods that support these participatory approaches is particularly promising in this context.