Global Culture

Further to my last post on accelerating innovation, and after reading a post on Facebook users by country I thought a bit of research was pertinent. Based on my own survey using Facebook itself, here is a list of some of the cities with the highest percentage of facebook users:

• Montreal - 35.2%
• Sydney - 28.4%
• Toronto - 24.7%
• London - 22%
• Hong Kong - 18.9%
• New York - 17.4%
• Singapore - 14.1%

I had to remove from the list other potential candidates where Facebook didn’t breakdown their user base by city; cities in northern Europe and South America among them. Any feedback or inquiries on other cities are welcome.

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Further to my post on the 2008 Global Cities Index, here is another snippet from the report ranking the best cities to get some culture based on things like sporting events, concurrence of travellers, variety of their culinary offerings, art installations and performances.

1. London
2. Paris
3. New York
4. Toronto
5. Los Angeles
6. Moscow
7. Tokyo
8. Berlin
9. Mexico City
10. Seoul

and the rest of the list.

With the recent opening of the Art Gallery of Ontario, a controversial renovation of the Royal Ontario Museum and a brand new Centre for the Performing Arts, us Torontonians have forged our way into the top 10. But it makes you wonder how much this type of top 10 lists can fluctuate when you start adding other factors as part of the ranking such as:

• average distance to nearby world heritage site,
• number of cultural events programmed throughout the year,
• affluence of visitors to major festivals,
• foreign cultures with active representation in the city,
• cumulative age of historic sites within city boundaries…

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In January of 2007 I posted the globalization index, a partnership between Foreign Policy magazine and A.T. Kearney. At the time the report listed the most globalized countries, led by Singapore, Switzerland and the United States. A few weeks ago I decided to once again fine tune the editorial line of this blog by dedicating more time to cover urban issues and the role of cities in the shaping of our global culture. So finding the Foreign Policy’s 2008 Global Cities Index serves to reinforce the recent spirit of this blog.

The methodology to rank the cities includes 24 metrics in five dimensions:

The first is business activity: including the value of its capital markets, the number of Fortune Global 500 firms headquartered there, and the volume of the goods that pass through the city. The second dimension measures human capital, or how well the city acts as a magnet for diverse groups of people and talent. This includes the size of a city’s immigrant population, the number of international schools, and the percentage of residents with university degrees. The third dimension is information exchange—how well news and information is dispersed about and to the rest of the world. The number of international news bureaus, the amount of international news in the leading local papers, and the number of broadband subscribers round out that dimension.

The final two areas of analysis are unusual for most rankings of globalized cities or states. The fourth is cultural experience, or the level of diverse attractions for international residents and travelers. That includes everything from how many major sporting events a city hosts to the number of performing arts venues it boasts. The final dimension— political engagement—measures the degree to which a city influences global policymaking and dialogue. How? By examining the number of embassies and consulates, major think tanks, international organizations, sister city relationships, and political conferences a city hosts.

The complete ranking breaks down the position of each city in each dimension, but here is a preview of the overall winners:
New York - London - Paris - Tokyo - Hong Kong - Los Angeles - Singapore - Chicago - Seoul - Toronto - Washington - Beijing - Brussels - Madrid - San Francisco

The index, a collaboration between Foreign Policiy, A.T. Kearney and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, includes a few other features such as how to be a global city, the placement of the 19 megacities in the index, the massive role of Chinese cities, an unexpected relationship between most global and cleanest urban centres and more.

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A few days ago I was paraphrasing philosopher Alain de Botton in my post about the future of the city. A more accurate transcription of his words follows:

True diversity comes from communication and contact [...] if there is no meeting point [the city] is not diverse [... a city] can look superficially very diverse, but if you actually look at the levels of integration and communication and public space and places where very different communities can come together, then all of the sudden [the city] can start looking at lot less diverse.

He was talking about London. Today I came across an article in Spacing magazine that questions the same issues, this time in Toronto. The article “Come Together” by Dale Duncan reports the activities of residents associations in what is known as “immigration gateway communities”. To understand the context, it is important to know some stats about the Toronto population mix:

• 30% The percentage of all recent immigrants to Canada that live in Toronto.
• 50% The percentage of Torontonians born outside of Canada
• 47% The percentage of Torontonians who have a mother tongue other than English or French

Immigration gateway communities is a creative way to label rough neighbourhoods characterized for lack of infrastructure and a high turn-over among their residents as people get out of them as soon as they can afford to do it. While the city has clearly identified 13 priority neighbourhoods, it is their citizens who are making a difference by creating the spaces where people can come together to talk about their needs, frustrations and sometimes even find solutions and have a stronger representation at City Hall.

When people migrate to the big cities assuming the better life style they will find, the reality of these communities -the only areas where they can afford to live in- quickly sinks in. Having travelled from so far away to find these obstacles only emphasizes the gap that exists between social groups. It aggravates the situation as they can see people around them with access to the life style they dream about, but they can’t get to it. For some this gap is an unmanageable trap as access to resources and opportunities becomes increasingly difficult. In the best case scenario the years that it will take a new immigrant to “graduate” from these neighbourhoods into better places will be remembered as a necessary sacrifice to realize the ultimate dream.

A responsible city has to create opportunities for integration. Not only by developing infrastructure that makes “gateway communities” better connected with the productive engine that requires these immigrants, but by creating public spaces that invite all the various social groups within a city to converge… More than two years ago I wrote the post “observe, analyze, generalize” as a tribute to what I was convinced was the quintessential “meeting point” suggested by Alain de Botton. In Toronto we call it Harbourfront Centre.

To be fair with the City of Toronto, there are major plans to improve infrastructure to better connect some of these areas via a new railway system. If only some of these plans could live up to the standards of other major cities with transportation that is not only functionally efficient but a distinctive trademark that makes it as unique as its diversity.

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After a week of dreadful financial news this Thanksgiving weekend (Canadian) turned out to be pretty good. Maybe it is the anticipation of another long winter, or the need to take our minds away from all the stress created by economic factors we can’t control, or the realization that somehow our lifestyles may be affected in the months to come, but we had to shake it all out of our system. My family and I took this couple of days to enjoy the outdoors in their splendid fall colours, taking long strolls through amazing hidden gems just outside of the city, along the neighbourhood and what I decided many years ago was my favourite spot in this great city of Toronto.

Being a global citizen one of the many thoughts that crossed my mind over the last few days was that if things get really bad one can always adapt to new realities, new geographies and in the end a way of life is always found. But after going through this soul-detox weekend it became clear that pessimistic views of the future can only be damaging. If we want to live in a better world where a few greedy corporations can’t take us all down there is a lot of work to do, if we want to have the right to live in such great cities (I know I do) we have to start by creating mechanisms that allow them to make the best out of limited resources and leverage those that make them unique. For a moment I could see myself trying to settle in a new city, as if there was escape to this crisis, but the prevailing attitude is to fight to make sure a few years down the road we’re still here, enjoying glorious weekends strolling around these streets.

This blog has seen many interesting ideas flourish. It seems now is the best time to start finding ways to realize them.

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I’m sure is not because Monocle released their most liveable cities report just a month ago, but now is The Economist releasing their Liveability rankings with the article Where the grass is greener. While Monocle’s report came in the form of a wonderful edition, perfectly written and documented, the Economist Intelligence Unit barely delivers a table with the rankings without much analysis behind. True, Monocle used criteria such “fair balance of sunny and warm days” and “availability of drinks after hours”, but the overall delivery convinced. According to The Economist

The survey takes over 40 factors into consideration which are weighted across five different categories: Stability; Healthcare; Culture & Environment; Education; and Infrastructure. Across the survey a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data are used, which are combined to give an overall Quality of Life Index rating.

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However I wasn’t able to find such factors anywhere, not even after paying for the full report. Anyway, this are the top 10 according to them, nothing that we haven’t seen before:

1. Vancouver, Canada
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. Vienna, Austria
4. Perth, Australia
5. Toronto, Canada
6. Adelaide, Australia
7. Sydney, Australia
8. Copenhagen, Denmark
9. Geneva, Switzerland
10. Zurich, Switzerland

Still, I never get tired of ranking cities and feeling a bit proud on behalf of those cities that I’ve come to know one way or another.

Update: after corresponding with the Editor of the report at the Economist Intelligence Unit I was given access to the full report which documents their methodology. The ranking is based on 5 categories:

• Stability (25%): crime, conflict
• Healthcare (20%): private & public healthcare
• Culture & Environment (25%): weather, freedoms, culture, food, goods
• Education (10%): private & public education
• Infrastructure (20%): public transportation, international connections, housing, services, telecomminications

As suspected, their analysis is far more methodic but is intended to help companies planning to expand make decisions about how to compensate workers being transferred.

The survey was conducted in June 2007 so if you’re curious about the ranking of your city, send me a note and I’ll share the data.

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Spearheaded by San Francisco, a group of cities have created a global Digital City Network with the following objectives:

Broker international relationships between educational, business, and community-based digital media organizations; Create new business to business ventures between jurisdictions; Support the growth and innovation of existing digital media businesses; Develop new cutting-edge digital media companies in each location; Encourage private and public investment in advanced digital technologies and linkages between jurisdictions; Expand workforce development and education opportunities in digital media; Provide technical support for digital media incubators and business accelerators; Develop strategies to respond to the rapid changes in new media technologies; Inform shareholders about emerging digital media issues, innovations and best practices

The short list of cities invited to participate in the network were chosen for their forward looking approach to supporting the development of the information and technology industries:

• San Francisco - United States,
• Toronto - Canada,
• Paris - France,
• Prague - Czech Republic,
• Dublin - Ireland,
• Madras - India,
• Guadalajara - Mexico,
• Skopje - Macedonia and
• Singapore

Thanks to Dave for the heads up.

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