Josephine Yilan Liu is the founder Transformative Cities, and one of the leading voices in cognitive urbanism — the study of how cities shape meaning, behaviour, and identity at scale.
Her work reveals the cognitive layer of the city:
the pre-conscious infrastructure that determines how people move, who they trust, where they linger, what they avoid, and which identities become viable or never form.
Josephine draws on architecture, environmental design, and cognitive science to show how small, precise shifts in the built environment can reorganise behaviour, norms, and politics — often far more effectively than large-scale plans. Her thinking bridges cutting-edge cognitive science with real-world urban practice.
She is also a co-founder of the Urban Future Global Conference (UFGC), Europe’s largest event for sustainable cities.
Josephine speaks internationally on:
- Cognitive infrastructure and behaviour at scale
- How cities shape meaning, belonging, and identity
- Why many urban projects fail despite good design
- How subtle environmental cues can trigger system-level change
- The future of cities as sense-making environments
Her work equips planners, policymakers, and developers to design cities not only as physical systems, but as cognitive environments — places that cultivate trust, agency, connection, and the human futures we want.
