Living Cities brings Capital + Culture platform to Dallas

Living Cities is taking its Capital + Culture platform to Dallas on June 18, 2026, as the city prepares for the FIFA World Cup and more growth. The initiative aims to examine whether economic expansion in one of America’s fastest-growing markets is creating opportunity and ownership for local residents and businesses. Why it matters: - Dallas is entering another surge of economic activity with the FIFA World Cup, more visitors, more investment, and more contracts. - Living Cities is using that moment to test a bigger question: whether growth in high-growth regions actually reaches the people who live there. - The effort focuses on whether investment leads to access to capital, contracts, jobs, business ownership, and wealth-building. What happened: - Living Cities announced that it is bringing its Capital + Culture platform to Dallas on June 18, 2026. - The platform is designed to examine how major events can become catalysts for broadly shared prosperity. - Joe Scantlebury, president and CEO of Living Cities, said the key issue is not just how much a region grows, but who grows with it. - The organization timed the initiative around the FIFA World Cup, which is expected to bring more attention and economic activity to Dallas. The details: - Dallas is positioned as one of the country’s clearest growth stories, with ongoing business relocations, population growth, investment, and construction. - Living Cities says growth and opportunity are not the same thing, and economic expansion can coexist with uneven access to wealth-building. - The initiative asks who receives contracts, customers, capital, workforce opportunities, and procurement access. - The organization says success should be measured by whether more entrepreneurs, small businesses, workers, and communities gain durable economic benefits. - Living Cities describes itself as an Action Engine for Equitable Cities, a collaborative of philanthropic foundations and financial institutions focused on closing income and wealth gaps in the U.S. - The organization says it has spent 35 years advancing policy and systems changes that support inclusive wealth-building. - More information is available in Living Cities’ Capital + Culture announcement . Between the lines: - Dallas is a natural test case because growth is already visible and widely celebrated. - The broader argument is that visible momentum can still produce concentrated gains if access to opportunity stays limited. - Living Cities is reframing the World Cup from a tourism and infrastructure story into a long-term equity and ownership question. - The message to growth markets is that headline economic impact may matter less than who can participate in the gains. What’s next: - Living Cities will use the Dallas platform to explore whether local entrepreneurs, workers, and communities can capture more of the World Cup-driven economic upside. - The longer-term question will be whether the region’s next wave of growth creates broader ownership and mobility, not just more activity. - The economic legacy of the tournament will likely be judged after the matches end, when the immediate spotlight fades. The bottom line: - Dallas has mastered growth. Living Cities is asking whether that growth is working for everyone.