Over the course of the years I’ve spent countless vacation days hanging out at some very charming towns where the rhythm of life seems to run at a different pace. I keep going back to those places every now and then with a good book and a mindset to let go and enjoy the moment. Days are long as nothing seems to really happen in these places, but somehow I always find myself recharged when I come back.
Well, I’m going back again, but this time I’m on a mission. I’m taking a few business plans, ideas, contacts, technology tools, even a moderate budget and I’m going with the intent to bring some of the big-city mentality of innovating to places that may not be used to it. I expect to come across people that will find this sudden change of pace motivating and will take the lead. If I can create one meaningful connection between this place and the city where I live, I will consider the mission a success. Then there will be other towns. Then there will be a global tour, a global culture tour.
In the ongoing discussion about the tension between ever-accelerating innovation on big cities and the craving for a slow urban way of life, I’m convinced that the best of both worlds can only be discovered when we mix them up good, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.
A recent article on BusinessWeek stated that some small towns are finally realizing the value of entrepreneurs and are creating local incentives to attract startups, creating a very interesting landscape for anyone thinking about launching a new venture.
cities are beginning to recognize entrepreneurs as a “third leg” of economic development, as important as retaining existing jobs and attracting large corporations. While startup meccas like the Bay Area offer concentrations of talent and investors, new companies there face plenty of competition for those resources, and the cost of doing business is high. In smaller cities, new businesses enjoy lower costs and a higher profile to attract workers, and may be able to get government incentives to create jobs.
A complete analysis of small cities across the United States was commissioned by BusinessWeek and their entire list can be found in their Best Small Cities for Startups, but here are the top performers based on number of startups per capita with an average of 5.5 startups per 1,000 inhabitants:
- Boulder, Colorado
- Doral, Florida
- Sandy Springs
- Boise City, Idaho
- Bozeman, Montana
- Bend, Oregon
- Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
- Franklin, Tennessee
- Fairfax, Virginia
Intrigued by the idea? Have any suggestions about places that could use this kind of exchange? Leave a comment.
Because I spend a lot of my day working around all things travel, that knowledge somehow defines a general theme for many of my posts. Even on my twitter account (@globalculture) I often find it easier to engage in casual conversation whenever the topic is travel. People lighten up when talking about travel.
So when @jenandtheart made a comment about how the Global Culture blog was rising above the usual lightness with which most people talk about travel and culture, he really got me thinking. Long time ago I diagnosed myself with the “meaningful conversation disorder” by which I usually feel inadequate unless a conversation can transcend the mundane. And it seems this blog suffers that same fate.
If I have been talking about travel a little bit too much and it seemed out of place amid the more profound earlier debate, here is a spin that should bring the tone of the blog back to its usual depth:
If you have been planning on reducing your travel budget because the current economy makes you cautious, start packing. You may be travelling sooner than you’d expect.
First some context: in smaller houses, better communities I echoed the idea that the current environment should accelerate some of the urbanization trends, such as concentrating within the core areas that foster creativity and innovation, even if that means moving more often:
“Less ties to a place would create an incentive for people to relocate to the hubs where new opportunities arise.”
And in a call to not waste the current crisis, I seconded the notion to take advantage of the unique opportunity that we have to challenge the old ways to lead to a new standard of living:
“as we grow aware of the world around us and educate ourselves in the ways of other peoples and cultures, we can’t help but notice that things abroad are not too different from things around the corner. In the midst of a global recession it’s easy to panic if we are all doing things in the same ways, buying the same products, asserting the same way of live. After all when the entire boat is going down, you don’t want to be where the majority of the crowd is (pardon the extreme analogy). Instead each one of us will look at doing things a little bit different, trying to use all those lessons on global culture to create a unique mix that will allow us to become unique actors in a complex stage where the rules are about to be rewritten.
In “How the Crash Will Reshape America“, Richard Florida provides an insightful look at the various factors that will be changing the balance of power among American cities. He challenges the assumption that New York will succumb at the same pace its financial industry melts down and believes it will in fact force its creative industries to take the lead in many other fronts… diversifying its portfolio, so to speak.
And just like being in New York during this transitional phase will likely present key opportunities to those that storm the weather, all the other world’s mega-regions will continue to concentrate talent and produce most economic output. Urban innovation will have to accelerate to sustain the rhythm of life in these regions.
Ultimately a variety of factors will lead to a new American urban geography according to Florida:
It will likely be sparser in the Midwest and also, ultimately, in those parts of the Southeast that are dependent on manufacturing. Its suburbs will be thinner and its houses, perhaps, smaller. Some of its southwestern cities will grow less quickly. Its great mega-regions will rise farther upward and extend farther outward. It will feature a lower rate of homeownership, and a more mobile population of renters. In short, it will be a more concentrated geography, one that allows more people to mix more freely and interact more efficiently in a discrete number of dense, innovative mega-regions and creative cities.
An uprooted population, globally inclined, aware of the fact that jobs will be scarce is likely to give away its current address in exchange for some job security. In particular if those jobs are in tune with the zeitgeist. Settling in a new city used to be something you did maybe twice in a lifetime. I believe many of us will be faced with this transition more than a few times. In the same way that the average person would move to a bigger house every 3-5 years (eventually buying the one they couldn’t afford), many of us will find ourselves pondering not a better neighbourhood but a completely new city.
This may sound like a bold move, but your inner global citizen is rejoicing at the possibility that a new travel adventure is around the corner. Pack lightly as you may be on the road for some time. I believe our ancestors used to call this a ‘nomadic’ life.
What if you could spend the next two years of your life travelling around the world, taking the time to really get to know each place you visit and nurture long lasting relationships with locals at each point? Which destinations would you choose, knowing that you want to cover as much world as possible but don’t want to feel in a race?
Mostly inspired by slow-travellers like soultravelers3, who have found the way to engage on an open ended trip around the world, taking time to settle in each community they visit and making it a way of life, I realized it was possible to engage on a similar experience by splitting the journey into one to two month long segments, each one of which would be done every year. So this year you devote your summer to a little village in Spain and the next year you immerse yourself into the calm serenity of the northern Italian alpine villages. Each year you complete another leg of this tour around the world…
The nature of such journey allows you to engage in meaningful discovery of the culture that makes each destination unique, and not just the landmarks that have made it famous. Every year you grow wiser as a global citizen, a contemporary Phileas Fogg. With each year you become more engaged with your community because you’ve learned of all the things that you took for granted and find new ways to give back throughout your journey, because you know what value you can add to each destination.
You grow more cosmopolitan as each destination thrives on your cosmopolitanism.
Using the Emerging Markets Index released by Mastercard back in October, I’ve created something I’m going to call the Emerging Destination Index as a tool to provide clues as to which non-traditional tourist destinations may provide the fundamental infrastructure to sustain the type of travellers that I’ve been discussing over the last little while in this blog.
The original index data is available from Mastercard, and all I did was to reconfigure the weights assigned by the original methodology to assign more value to those dimensions that have a higher impact on the ability of a traveller to operate remotely from the region with fair access to a urban standard of living. These are the weights I assigned:
- Economic and Commercial Environment (0%) – Used in the original index to measure time and costs for building a standard warehouse, registering a property, exporting/importing cargo, and rate corruption and foreign bond, it seemed mostly irrelevant for the purpose of this index, so I left it out.
- Economic Growth and Development (10%) – Measuring the broad economic health and growth of the national economy this dimension seems to be the best way of describing the level of infrastructure that will ultimately support most activities from those visiting. It will also likely be related to the level scope of urban areas and the availability of important infrastructure outside of the major cities.
- Business Environment (7%) - Reflects the ability to setup a business. After all in order for travellers to gain access to the region, business must prosper along with all their suppliers, just so the visitors can enjoy their stay with a guarantee of fundamental services.
- Financial Services Environment (6%) – The availability of financial services to sustain the traveller during the stay.
- Commercial Connectivity (16%) – While I made the point that no place on Earth is remote anymore, this dimension measures city connectivity to other world and regional commercial centers by air, airline passenger volumes, presence of foreign consulates/embassies, international hotels, convention/meeting facilities, and international trade.
- Education, and IT Connectivity Environment (12%) – The availability of basic IT infrastructure may be key for those trying to maintain their links to work life active while on the region.
- Quality of Urban Life (28%) – Measures the quality of life by considering: personal freedom/media and censorship, medical and health considerations, public services and transport, recreation and culture, mortality, and the presence of world heritage sites. For someone looking to make a trip to a region for a few weeks, this dimension alone provides the most important aspect of the index on whether the visit will be full of memorable experiences.
- Risk & Security (21%) – Gauges a city’s overall risk and security through personal freedom, personal physical safety and the political and social environment. A concern in most emerging regions continues to be personal security and while a destination may be inviting, venturing outside of the usual tourist destinations will require the region to provide a basic safety guarantee.
Here are the top 10 destinations according to this index:
- Shanghai
- Budapest
- Warsaw
- Beijing
- Buenos Aires
- Kuala Lumpur
- Sao Paulo
- Santiago
- Mexico City
- Bangkok
I’ll be happy to share the full list of 65 with anyone that is interested.
The Economist is already calling the US election: Obama. I seriously hope The Economist is right. The result of this election is decided by a very small percentage of the people who are affected by its outcome and I’m certain the consensus around the world is that it is time for a change.
Here is my list of what Global Culture needs from the next president of the United States:
- The US has some of the most successful cities in the world. Over the next decade that model needs to be replicated throughout America, creating new magnets for talent and investors.
- The size of economic rescue that will be needed over the next few years can only be accomplished by creating entire new industries; let it be that of the cities of the future: sustainable, energy-efficient, less dependent of non-renewable resources, able to produce only the necessary goods and doing good through a well educated workforce.
- After years of catastrophic diplomatic efforts, realize that your best ambassadors may be those US global citizens that are ready to embrace other cultures. Baby boomers may find their retirement funds will do better in other currencies.
- Leverage diversity as a strength. Study the common grounds with other cultures that will create the opportunities for a more peaceful world. This is easy when your cities are some of the most cosmopolitan in the world.
- In the era of increased mobility it is absurd to go on with measures to restrict the movement of people. Recognize this and capitalize on the increasing flow through programs to integrate migrants to the workforce, and create more tolerant, diverse and culturally rich urban centres.
- Lead the globalization efforts through a renewed sense of corporate responsibility. Every corporation understand the value in reaching out to the world, but they can’t keep doing it at the expense of the world. If the recent crisis has taught us something is that moral leadership is clearly needed.
If you’re a US citizen vote. If you are not, send a friendly reminder to your known friends with the right to participate in this historic election.
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.
Clustering of like-minded individuals is not a new idea, but new research based on the mapping of personality types reveals one very interesting trend about the group called “Open To Experience People”: they are far more distributed than any of the other groups.
In his post The Personality Map, Richard Florida presents these results in a timely manner to promote his most recent book “Who’s Your City?”. A much better explanation is given in his column on the Global and Mail:
We know that values, beliefs, and attitudes cluster geographically and are sustained over time through social interaction – that’s what defines culture. According to Sam Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas, and Jason Rentfrow, a psychologist at Cambridge University, these places (and their inhabitants) will also assume certain personality traits.
They refer to these as “social founder effects.” That is, people come to acquire personality traits that reflect their practices, lifestyles, and beliefs. Places that tolerate or encourage openness to experience will ultimately attract people who seek environments in which they can feel free to express themselves.
People seeking a place where they can express themselves is almost a perfect definition for the global citizen that will move anywhere around the world to find the region that better defines the core values that he/she hold true and treasure the most. This realization provides a very important argument in favor of why cities that have been welcoming to generations of migrants are now among the most important hubs for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. As I have stated in previous posts, one of the most essential tools of the person starting a journey to a new place is a complete willingness to experience and accept a new culture without hesitation. This very same personality treat is probably, according to this research, why these same cities have evolved economies that are a model for a truly global city. Cosmopolitanism and its quest for understanding other cultures may be the key that triggers the desire to relocate to a newly discovered region of the world, but it is that same global knowledge that gives the region an important advantage as more connections with the rest of the world are created with every new individual that arrives. So, while it may be psychological characteristics what drives the clustering shown above, I believe it is the global connections that these people have what fosters a prosperous economy.
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