News & Events Event Reports

Sixth Global Summit: Promoting Community-Safety and Wellbeing

Publication Date:

22/01/2026

Content Type:

Event Reports

Share:

Tags:

City-Led Preventioncommunity safetyCommunity-Safety and WellbeingSixth Global SummitToronto

— 6 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during the session and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Introduction

On 9 – 11 December 2025, the Strong Cities Network held its Sixth Global Summit in Toronto (Canada), bringing together more than 300 representatives of local governments, national governments, civil society organisations, academia, the private sector and international organisations. This included nearly 60 mayors and governors, as well as 110 other local government officials from 100 cities and 42 countries. Under the theme Stronger Together: Forging Safer, Connected, Thriving Cities in a Changing World, the Summit provided a platform for city leaders to share practical and innovative solutions to prevent and respond to hate, extremism and polarisation, and build safer, more resilient and more inclusive communities.

The Summit agenda included a Mayoral Conversation focused on how cities are promoting community safety and wellbeing in the context of rising hate, misinformation, and polarisation amid overlapping local, national and global crises. The session highlighted the unique position of mayors as frontline leaders who must respond to complex and evolving threats while maintaining social cohesion and public trust in local institutions.

The discussion brought together local leaders from diverse geographic and political contexts. Speakers reflected on the pressures facing their cities, the preventive actions they are taking, with a focus on the importance of collaborative, community-centred leadership in mitigating risks before they escalate into violence or long-term division.

Scene-Setters:

• Charlie Clark, Mayoral Advisor, Strong Cities Network, and former Mayor of Saskatoon (Saskatchewan, Canada)
• Daniel Rickenmann, Mayor, City of Columbia (South Carolina, United States)
• Patricia Cuttell, Deputy Mayor, Halifax Regional Municipality (Nova Scotia, Canada)
• Rahma Ouazzani Taibi, Deputy Mayor, City of Rabat (Morocco)
• Ray McAdam, Lord Mayor, City of Dublin (Ireland)

Key Themes 

1. Mayors as First Responders to Social Cohesion Challenges

Across cities and regions, speakers emphasised that mayors are often the first to confront the local impacts of hate, polarisation and mis-/disinformation. While national debates may frame these issues abstractly, mayors experience their consequences directly through rising tensions in neighbourhoods, schools and other public spaces.

Daniel Rickenmann, Mayor of Columbia (South Carolina, United States), described misinformation as one of the most difficult challenges facing cities, noting that it is driven by fast-moving news cycles and online ecosystems largely beyond local control. Similarly, Ray McAdam, Lord Mayor of Dublin (Ireland), highlighted how overlapping crises, including displacement linked to the war in Ukraine, increased migration and online mis-/disinformation campaigns focused on wedge issues have placed sustained pressure on social cohesion in his city.

Speakers consistently stressed that proximity to residents allows local leaders to identify emerging risks early and respond in ways that are grounded in lived community realities rather than national political narratives.

2. Community-Centred Prevention and Trust-Building

Speakers also highlighted the centrality of trusted, community-based engagement in preventing escalation and rebuilding social cohesion. For example, Rahma Ouazzani Taibi, Deputy Mayor of Rabat (Morocco), outlined how social inequality, youth disengagement and online hate speech have contributed to fragmentation in the city, underscoring the need for inclusive approaches that reconnect residents to shared civic life. These approaches included Rabat’s investment in youth employment, partnerships with local businesses and large-scale sport and cultural initiatives designed to create shared public spaces and reduce alienation.

In Columbia, Mayor Rickenmann described establishing an Office of Neighbourhood Safety and Engagement to coordinate anti-violence efforts, bringing together organisations that had previously worked in isolation, achieving measurable reductions in violence as a result of pursuing a more collaborative approach.

Patricia Cuttell, Deputy Mayor of Halifax Regional Municipality (Nova Scotia, Canada), highlighted how her city has created a dedicated Community Safety Department and trauma-informed community mobilisation teams to help ensure that prevention efforts are both grounded in community engagement and can be sustained across political cycles.

3. Delivery, Collaboration and Visible Impact

Speakers agreed that public confidence in a mayor or other local leaders is shaped less by rhetoric than by delivery and collaboration. Successful local leadership was described as focusing on tangible improvements in residents’ daily lives, including access to housing, safety, services and opportunities for participation. Speakers underscored the need for leaders “to go back to basics… focus on delivery and show people they matter”.

In Dublin, Mayor McAdam said he reactivated a mayoral taskforce on integration, working with various communities in the metropolitan area and city villages with distinct local identities to rebuild a sense of belonging, while providing residents with clear and accessible information to counter false narratives around migration.

In Halifax, budgetary decisions were framed as signals of the local government’s priorities, with sustained resources for hate-crime units, anti-racism offices and climate resilience initiatives contributing to long-term trust. In Columbia, visible impact has also come from sustained investment in youth engagement and community dialogue beyond formal service delivery programmes. Mayor Rickenmann described how regular meetings with young people, including university students, created space to discuss issues that were otherwise avoided, such as international events and crises that were polarising young people in the city and fuelling local tensions. The city deliberately expanded engagement to include parents and families, recognising that prevention is most effective when conversations extend beyond the most vulnerable to their wider support networks. This approach reinforced that prevention is not only about programmes or service delivery, but also about being present, listening to and empowering communities to be part of the solution.

In addressing issues that threaten cities’ social cohesion, several speakers cautioned against local leaders amplifying polarising national debates, instead emphasising the importance of reinforcing connection, community and cohesion through consistent messaging, visibility and partnership across the city.

Next Steps

This Mayoral Conversation reaffirmed the critical role of mayors in preventing hate, extremism and polarisation through locally grounded and community-centred leadership. Building on the discussion, Strong Cities will continue to elevate mayoral perspectives and practical city-led approaches through its global programming.

Key next steps include:

• Strengthening peer learning among mayors and other local leaders, enabling them to exchange strategies for addressing youth disengagement, community polarisation and threats to information integrity.
• Supporting the development of city-led prevention mechanisms, including community safety and wellbeing frameworks and task forces, and trauma-informed response models that sustain impact over time.
• Amplifying mayoral voices in national and international policy spaces, ensuring that local realities inform broader prevention, resilience and cohesion frameworks.

The session underscored that mayors are not only implementers of policy, but essential leaders in shaping inclusive and resilient cities. For Strong Cities, supporting mayors as frontline actors remains central to advancing whole-of-society approaches to prevention and community safety wellbeing.

Additional Resources

Recent Strong Cities policy briefs and resources:

• City Leadership in Partnering with Local Communities for Social Cohesion: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• National-Local Cooperation: Opportunities and Lessons Learned for Secondary and Tertiary Prevention, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• City Leadership in the Face of Rising Incivility and Polarisation: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• Innovations in Prevention: Piloting Multi-Actor Frameworks in Small and Mid-Sized Cities in the United States, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Cities: Building a Multi-Actor Local Prevention Framework, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Manitoba Municipalities: Addressing Anti-Government Hate and Harassment, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Guide for Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for Mayors: Preventing and Responding to Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for City-Led Response, Strong Cities Network, May 2024
• City Spotlights Library, Strong Cities Network

Donors & Partners

The Sixth Global Summit was co-hosted with the City of Toronto and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and delivered with generous support from the Government of Canada, The Fourth Freedom Forum, The Toronto Foundation and Charities Aid Foundation.

Contact Information 

For more information about the Sixth Global Summit or the Strong Cities Network, please contact [email protected].

News & EVENTS

Stay up to date with recent news, articles and event reports

News & Events

Looking for something in our Resource Hub?

Or explore all resources

Nominated for Best Animated Short at Cannes

Watch now

Join US

Looking to become a Strong City?

Get in touch