San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency<\/a> (SFMTA), where he most recently served as Chief Strategy Officer.<\/p>\nIn his new role, he will support agendas, provide strategic direction, and moderate the Institute\u2019s North America mobility meetings, working closely with senior city officials and industry partners.<\/p>\n
For Rewers, the move reflects a belief that cities need spaces where leaders can step back from day-to-day pressures and confront the scale of change reshaping urban transport, while staying focused on delivery rather than theory.<\/p>\n
\u201cCities are where the world changes,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re in a period where cities need to be beyond the minimum expectation that the status quo is okay. The minimum expectation should be that we move at the pace of change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rewers sees the Cities Today Institute as a rare forum where cities can step away from modal silos and engage in practical, cross-cutting discussions about how transport systems function.<\/p>\n
Through closed-door meetings and peer networks, the Institute convenes senior city leaders and industry partners with a shared focus on implementation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we focus on public transport alone, or safety alone, or freight alone, we end up disappointing,\u201d Rewers said. \u201cEverything is interconnected.\u201d<\/p>\n
His ambition in the role is to help city leaders not only share ideas but understand how to implement them within complex political and institutional environments.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I participated in these discussions, I walked out with a brand-new idea,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat I want to bring is not only generating those ideas but talking about how you actually achieve them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Learning from disruption, not resisting it<\/p>\n
Rewers\u2019 outlook has been shaped less by abstract strategy than by proximity to disruption. His career at SFMTA coincided with a period when San Francisco found itself repeatedly at the forefront of global mobility change, often before other cities had time to react.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could see the headquarters of Uber from the window of my office,\u201d he said. \u201cI saw what that did to the taxi industry. I saw scooters show up from nowhere. I saw micromobility show up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ride-hailing platforms scaled rapidly. Dockless e-scooters appeared on pavements almost overnight. Private commuter buses, delivery services and early autonomous vehicle pilots blurred long-standing boundaries between public and private transport. The speed and visibility of change forced city officials to respond in real time, often without established playbooks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were so afraid of the rapid change, we tried to slow it down to our pace,\u201d Rewers said. \u201cWhat I learned over time is that we need to join the rapid pace of change.\u201d<\/p>\n
That experience now underpins how he thinks about leadership in cities more broadly. While innovation is unavoidable, Rewers cautions against focusing on the new at the expense of the fundamentals.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes we get so excited about the new that we forget about the need for strong foundations,\u201d he said, pointing to asset management, infrastructure condition and technology ecosystems. \u201cYou let those crumble, and everything else becomes harder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lessons from San Francisco\u2019s experience<\/p>\n
Despite San Francisco\u2019s reputation as a testing ground for scooters, ride-hailing and autonomous vehicles, Rewers argues that its most influential contribution to urban transport thinking was less visible but more durable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number one thing that came out of San Francisco in my time is variable pricing on parking and using parking management as congestion management,\u201d he said. \u201cUsing the kerb to manage traffic, manage the movement of goods, and actually reduce congestion and speed up public transport.\u201d<\/p>\n
By reframing parking and kerb space as active policy tools rather than static assets, the city helped shape how transport authorities around the world now approach congestion, freight loading and bus priority.<\/p>\n
San Francisco\u2019s later embrace of autonomous vehicle testing also reflected lessons learned from earlier disruption.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned with Uber and Lyft and scooters to have conversations with industry and the private sector,\u201d Rewers said. \u201cHow do you create an environment where you\u2019re a lab? That\u2019s something cities can learn from San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n
The constraint cities struggle to break<\/p>\n
Looking across North American cities, Rewers points to a familiar set of challenges, but argues that funding alone does not explain why progress often stalls.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoney and public trust are definitely in the top two, and they\u2019re connected,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen cities can\u2019t deliver at the pace of change, disappointment grows. That disappointment reduces trust, and then the revenue you need becomes impossible to raise.\u201d<\/p>\n
He describes many cities as caught in a vicious circle, where limited delivery fuels scepticism, which in turn constrains the funding required to improve services.<\/p>\n
Freight and goods movement, he argues, are an increasingly important part of that equation. Historically treated as a state or national issue, goods movement has become a city-scale challenge as on-demand delivery reshapes streets and kerbs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re used to goods being moved on freight trains and big trucks,\u201d he said. \u201cNow we\u2019re having mass movement of goods in smaller vehicles at higher volume. That creates more congestion, more safety issues, and more disappointment if it\u2019s not managed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even emerging technologies such as drones, Rewers suggests, should be evaluated through the same systems lens.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if we said drones are a new way to manage congestion?\u201d he said. \u201cHow do we move goods off the ground and out of our roads?\u201d<\/p>\n
Rikesh Shah, Global Urban Mobility Director at the Cities Today Institute, said Rewers\u2019 appointment strengthens its North America mobility work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am delighted that Jonathan will be joining our team leading our North America activity on urban mobility,\u201d he said. \u201cHis wealth of transport and city experience will enable us to effectively identify key mobility challenges facing cities in North America, and shape opportunities through public private collaboration on how we make cities better. It\u2019s fantastic that we can use his creativity and experience in this capacity to take forward the Institute\u2019s activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Rewers, the motivation remains rooted in confidence in what cities can achieve when the right conversations happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m one thousand percent confident that the ideas and actions that will come out of this work will be groundbreaking,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re not only going to see ideas. You\u2019re going to see real change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"04 February 2026 by Jonathan Andrews The Cities Today Institute (CTI) has appointed Jonathan Rewers (pictured) as Director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[6919,79438,79439,79440,79441,79442,79443,79444,79445,79446,101,103,102,104,106,105,39279,79447,79448,32926],"class_list":["post-164196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-autonomous-vehicles","tag-cities-today-institute","tag-city-leadership","tag-curb-management","tag-freight-and-logistics","tag-micromobility","tag-mobility-innovation","tag-north-america-cities","tag-parking-policy","tag-public-transport-policy","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-smart-cities","tag-transport-governance","tag-transport-leadership","tag-urban-mobility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}