This year’s Global City conference took place in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, which has set out a 25-year vision to be a sustainable city. Michael Burton reports from the event whose sessions ranged from city branding and immigration to culture and climate change
The two cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi are, like Manchester and Liverpool, near neighbours and competitors.
There, the similarity between the two cities in the United Arab Emirates ends.
While brash, ultra-urban Dubai, a Houston in the desert, has become famous for its phenomenal growth in the past decade, the world’s largest skyscrapers and, until last year, a property-fuelled boom, Abu Dhabi has taken a more sustainable route.
Dubai, whose oil money ran out long ago, is now in recession, hit like western economies by the credit crunch and its dependence on the property market. Huge tower blocks stand empty or half-built, western companies have pulled out or made staff redundant, and residential prices dropped 40% in the first three months of this year.
Its sister emirate city, Abu Dhabi, which still has oil and which never pursued the property-based strategy of Dubai, has been far less affected by the downturn. Its municipal leaders’ strategy is threefold – not to repeat the mistakes of Dubai, to diversify from dependence on oil, and to turn Abu Dhabi into a sustainable global city with a strong cultural element.
Its plan is to transform from a ‘20th century carbon-based economy, to a 21st century sustainable, high-technology economy’.
To this end, the city is developing a cultural quarter as a key part of its sell, and has attracted both the Louvre in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao and New York fame to set up galleries in Abu Dhabi.
The city’s 25-year plan, which envisages a trebling of the population, has a strong focus on sustainability. A new centre at Masda aims to be zero carbon and zero waste, and become a world centre for renewable energy research.
The city, through its department of municipal affairs, also for the first time hosted the annual two-day Global City conference last month in the city’s ultra-prestige hotel, The Emirates Palace.
For its first three years, Global City, run by the French company which holds the property show MIPIM, took place in France, latterly at Lyons. This year, it moved to Abu Dhabi, reflecting the increasing shift of emphasis eastwards, towards the booming cities of India and China.
The event was both an opportunity for Abu Dhabi to promote itself on an international stage and for the delegates to share intelligence about city planning.
Content included presentations by leading cities expert, Richard Florida, a panel debate among city mayors from across the world looking at factors for success, and sessions on public realm, transport, smart cities, climate strategy, culture, and the post-recession scenario.
The 300 delegates and speakers were international, with leading UK city experts among the latter, as well as local representatives from Abu Dhabi’s ruling family and municipal department. Birmingham City Council, for example, has already had meetings with leading Abu Dhabi officials who are planning a return trip to the city, and one of the conference speakers was Birmingham’s regeneration director, Clive Dutton, who said: ‘I am confident that establishing such senior level contacts in the emirate’s political, business and investment networks will stand Birmingham in very good stead as we aim to bring global investment to the city.’
One of the more popular seminars at the conference was on place-branding.
Carla Coletta, president of the association representing US city chief executives, summed this up as: ‘Sell a story. Make that story transformative.
‘A brand is an aspirational narrative about what you want the city to be, but your brand has to be grounded in reality. After all, cities talk back, unlike products. People have a right to comment on whatever tag you want to hang on their city. And if word of mouth doesn’t carry the campaign, you can never afford the advertising to replace that.’
Abu Dhabi even has an Office of the Brand of Abu Dhabi, created in 2007. Its mission is to respect the culture and heritage of the past. Its general manager, Reem al Shemari, said: ‘We didn’t want to build the brand on tangible assets such as buildings, sun or sand, but instead concentrated on people and culture.’
The city has created a distinctive logo using caligraphy to emphasise the past.
Dr Kathy Alexander, chief executive of Australia’s Melbourne, described how it was transformed from a city in the 1990s which was dead after 5pm into its present lively centre. The key elements to this were boosting the population, with 30,000 more homes built in the city centre, creating more pedestrian areas, promoting tourism, encouraging arts, and boosting infrastructure.
Walter Anderau from the Greater Zurich board, described the challenges of rebranding a mature city. Surprisingly, although surveys consistently put Zurich among the top 10 world cities to live in, its managers wanted to change from the ‘banks, boring, bourgeois’ image. As Mr Anderau commented: ‘We wanted to be more like San Francisco or London..’
So, the rebranding focused on the four themes of technology (‘the machine in the garden’), IT (‘knowledge centrics’), civilised corporate lifestyle (corporate utopia) and cultural innovation.
Another popular seminar was on immigration. The UK’s director of the Centre for Cities, Dermot Finch, who chaired the session, pointed out that what often held cities back was lack of skills.
Thomas Bartkoski, from World Business, Chicago, his the city’s growth would not have been possible without immigration.
It now has the largest Mexican population in the United States, after Los Angeles, while one million citizens speak a language other than English at home.
He added: ‘President Barack Obama came from Chicago, which was attractive to him with his multi-ethnic background.
It’s important that the current recession doesn’t lead to insular attitudes towards immigration.’
Peter Woods, secretary general of United Cities and Local Government, Asia Pacific, and a former president of the local government association in Australia, added: ‘Success isn’t just because migrants have arrived. What happens is how they’re received. And in current times, there’ll be more discrimination for political expediency.’
During a mayors’ panel discussion, Jason Hu the lively mayor of Taichung City, the third largest in Taiwan, said he too had tried to bid for the Guggenheim, which went instead to Abu Dhabi. Future plans for his city in the next eight years included tripling the amount of green spaces, boosting recycling, cycle paths and energy efficiency.
And the vice-mayor of Beijing, Chen Gang, said his city’s plan was also to become more sustainable – a challenge indeed.
There, the similarity between the two cities in the United Arab Emirates ends.
While brash, ultra-urban Dubai, a Houston in the desert, has become famous for its phenomenal growth in the past decade, the world’s largest skyscrapers and, until last year, a property-fuelled boom, Abu Dhabi has taken a more sustainable route.
Dubai, whose oil money ran out long ago, is now in recession, hit like western economies by the credit crunch and its dependence on the property market. Huge tower blocks stand empty or half-built, western companies have pulled out or made staff redundant, and residential prices dropped 40% in the first three months of this year.
Its sister emirate city, Abu Dhabi, which still has oil and which never pursued the property-based strategy of Dubai, has been far less affected by the downturn. Its municipal leaders’ strategy is threefold – not to repeat the mistakes of Dubai, to diversify from dependence on oil, and to turn Abu Dhabi into a sustainable global city with a strong cultural element.
Its plan is to transform from a ‘20th century carbon-based economy, to a 21st century sustainable, high-technology economy’.
To this end, the city is developing a cultural quarter as a key part of its sell, and has attracted both the Louvre in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao and New York fame to set up galleries in Abu Dhabi.
The city’s 25-year plan, which envisages a trebling of the population, has a strong focus on sustainability. A new centre at Masda aims to be zero carbon and zero waste, and become a world centre for renewable energy research.
The city, through its department of municipal affairs, also for the first time hosted the annual two-day Global City conference last month in the city’s ultra-prestige hotel, The Emirates Palace.
For its first three years, Global City, run by the French company which holds the property show MIPIM, took place in France, latterly at Lyons. This year, it moved to Abu Dhabi, reflecting the increasing shift of emphasis eastwards, towards the booming cities of India and China.
The event was both an opportunity for Abu Dhabi to promote itself on an international stage and for the delegates to share intelligence about city planning.
Content included presentations by leading cities expert, Richard Florida, a panel debate among city mayors from across the world looking at factors for success, and sessions on public realm, transport, smart cities, climate strategy, culture, and the post-recession scenario.
The 300 delegates and speakers were international, with leading UK city experts among the latter, as well as local representatives from Abu Dhabi’s ruling family and municipal department. Birmingham City Council, for example, has already had meetings with leading Abu Dhabi officials who are planning a return trip to the city, and one of the conference speakers was Birmingham’s regeneration director, Clive Dutton, who said: ‘I am confident that establishing such senior level contacts in the emirate’s political, business and investment networks will stand Birmingham in very good stead as we aim to bring global investment to the city.’
One of the more popular seminars at the conference was on place-branding.
Carla Coletta, president of the association representing US city chief executives, summed this up as: ‘Sell a story. Make that story transformative.
‘A brand is an aspirational narrative about what you want the city to be, but your brand has to be grounded in reality. After all, cities talk back, unlike products. People have a right to comment on whatever tag you want to hang on their city. And if word of mouth doesn’t carry the campaign, you can never afford the advertising to replace that.’
Abu Dhabi even has an Office of the Brand of Abu Dhabi, created in 2007. Its mission is to respect the culture and heritage of the past. Its general manager, Reem al Shemari, said: ‘We didn’t want to build the brand on tangible assets such as buildings, sun or sand, but instead concentrated on people and culture.’
The city has created a distinctive logo using caligraphy to emphasise the past.
Dr Kathy Alexander, chief executive of Australia’s Melbourne, described how it was transformed from a city in the 1990s which was dead after 5pm into its present lively centre. The key elements to this were boosting the population, with 30,000 more homes built in the city centre, creating more pedestrian areas, promoting tourism, encouraging arts, and boosting infrastructure.
Walter Anderau from the Greater Zurich board, described the challenges of rebranding a mature city. Surprisingly, although surveys consistently put Zurich among the top 10 world cities to live in, its managers wanted to change from the ‘banks, boring, bourgeois’ image. As Mr Anderau commented: ‘We wanted to be more like San Francisco or London..’
So, the rebranding focused on the four themes of technology (‘the machine in the garden’), IT (‘knowledge centrics’), civilised corporate lifestyle (corporate utopia) and cultural innovation.
Another popular seminar was on immigration. The UK’s director of the Centre for Cities, Dermot Finch, who chaired the session, pointed out that what often held cities back was lack of skills.
Thomas Bartkoski, from World Business, Chicago, his the city’s growth would not have been possible without immigration.
It now has the largest Mexican population in the United States, after Los Angeles, while one million citizens speak a language other than English at home.
He added: ‘President Barack Obama came from Chicago, which was attractive to him with his multi-ethnic background.
It’s important that the current recession doesn’t lead to insular attitudes towards immigration.’
Peter Woods, secretary general of United Cities and Local Government, Asia Pacific, and a former president of the local government association in Australia, added: ‘Success isn’t just because migrants have arrived. What happens is how they’re received. And in current times, there’ll be more discrimination for political expediency.’
During a mayors’ panel discussion, Jason Hu the lively mayor of Taichung City, the third largest in Taiwan, said he too had tried to bid for the Guggenheim, which went instead to Abu Dhabi. Future plans for his city in the next eight years included tripling the amount of green spaces, boosting recycling, cycle paths and energy efficiency.
And the vice-mayor of Beijing, Chen Gang, said his city’s plan was also to become more sustainable – a challenge indeed.
