Living Cities launches Capital + Culture ahead of World Cup host city spending surge

Living Cities has launched Capital + Culture, a national platform focused on who benefits when major economic opportunities arrive in cities. The initiative starts with analysis of 2026 FIFA World Cup host markets and asks whether local businesses, workers, and neighborhoods share in the wealth created. Why it matters: - The 2026 FIFA World Cup will drive billions of dollars in spending, tourism, infrastructure activity, sponsorships, and contracts across North American host cities. - Living Cities is using that moment to test a broader economic-development question: whether growth actually reaches local businesses, entrepreneurs, workers, and neighborhoods. - The platform aims to push cities to measure not just activity, but access, ownership, and wealth creation. What happened: - Living Cities launched Capital + Culture on June 15, 2026, as a national platform focused on economic participation in host markets for the FIFA World Cup. - The initiative centers on one question: when opportunity arrives, who benefits? - President and CEO Joe Scantlebury said the effort challenges the idea that economic activity automatically produces opportunity. The details: - Capital + Culture will produce city-focused analyses on how host communities can turn visibility into lasting prosperity. - The platform will examine local procurement, entrepreneurship, workforce participation, neighborhood investment, ownership pathways, and community wealth creation. - Living Cities argues that major events often generate activity while local businesses struggle to win contracts, entrepreneurs stay disconnected from new markets, and residents see construction without ownership. - The initiative asks host cities to track who received contracts, who gained customers, who built wealth, who expanded ownership, and what remains after the event ends. - More information is available from Living Cities. Between the lines: - The launch is broader than the World Cup. - Living Cities is framing the tournament as a case study for a bigger concern in economic development: public excitement can mask uneven distribution of benefits. - The organization is also signaling scrutiny of infrastructure projects, tourism economies, entertainment districts, cultural corridors, major conventions, sporting events, and public-private development across the country. - That framing suggests the platform is intended to influence how cities evaluate return on investment, not just how they market growth. What’s next: - Living Cities will roll out additional analyses over the next several weeks as World Cup host cities prepare for matches and related spending. - The organization plans to apply the same questions to future capital and culture projects beyond the tournament. - The likely goal is to make shared prosperity a standard metric for major civic investments. The bottom line: - Living Cities wants cities to stop asking only how much money came in and start asking who actually benefited.