View from the 2012 Cities Summit

On December 6, 2011, TED announced that the 2012 TED Prize would go to the City 2.0--the city that works. Grand luck for Vancouver to have the opportunity, so fresh in the new year, to host an up-close look at exactly what such a city could be.

Of course a conference on The City offered heaps of mileage for Vancouver, always in the running for one of the world’s most livable cities. And the stars came out--Calgary’s rock-star mayor Naheed Nenshi, Surrey’s Dianne Watts, our own Gregor Robertson, and luminaries such as Carole Taylor, Douglas Coupland, and Mike Harcourt joined university presidents Stephen Toope (UBC) and Andrew Petter (SFU) for what promised to be an extraordinary urban exploration.

Yet great chunks of the 2012 Cities Summit seemed intent upon looking through the wrong end of the telescope--and occasionally just staring at the telescope itself. Much of the conference was pre-occupied with issues such as open data and affordable access to hyper-speed broadband. Any lineup of people cheering for these initiatives will have Your Faithful Scribbler near the front, but the absence of context and gravity flattened their impact.

And it must be said, the presence of corporate sponsors as major presenters diluted the sense of serious purpose.

Attention CBC, Sun News: get Naheed

Why, for instance, did representatives of IBM and Shaw warrant half hour key-note addresses, while luminaries like UBC president Stephen Toope and Naheed Nenshi were relegated to minor panel roles?

For those who have seen, or possibly even worshipped Naheed Nenshi in action, watching him answer three or four questions on open data (you can get snowplow reports from your house!) was just a little, um, underwhelming.

 We could have used a whole Nenshi hour. Seriously, would someone please give this guy his own show? If Marg Delahunty showed up in Nenshi’s driveway, she’d be dipping her cookies in a big mug of tea at the kitchen table instead of standing outside freezing those big girls in her Viking bra at Rob Ford’s place. Admit it, Canada, you could not buy better TV. Talking to you, Sun Media.

Undoubtedly future iterations of this summit, should Vancouver be so fortunate as to host them, will temper sponsor expectations, and put the spotlight on those whose reputations precede them.

 Speaking of which, Doug Coupland set off a Twitstorm with a spirited paean to the local in local culture--especially his admonition that “a city without strong, consistent arts funding is basically a parking lot,” which sparked a loud and delightful outburst of spontaneous applause. It’s probably unnecessary to point out here that our “arts problem” is a provincial rather than a civic one.

 Toope Sounds the Alarm about Vancouver’s talent exodus

Other panels proceeded choppily, without any broader context to highlight their impact. Of particular note was the panel on Cities as Urban Laboratories, moderated with exceptional skill by Wal van Lierop and featuring UBC president Stephen Toope and Lise Thorsen, Mayor of Copenhagen. All too briefly, attention was turned to the critical role played by human talent--the lifeblood of the knowledge economy. Toope sounded the alarm that Vancouver is hemorrhaging the precise talent needed to drive a thriving urban economy. “Massive exodus” were the exact chilling words. The panel agreed that we can attract, but not keep the people we need to build a sustainable urban economy.

 But why is the most livable city in the world experiencing this--and how do we stop the bleeding? These are the questions Vancouver must find an answer to, and soon.

But first, let’s listen to a presentation from Car2Go!

So it went…

 It’s the (emerging) economy, stupid