Cities are the new Black

Just watched the video in Kevin Roberts’ blog entry “In Praise of Cities” where he speaks to people who runs Wellington (capital of New Zealand) and here is an excerpt from the blog entry (emphasis mine),

Kerry had asked me to talk about how a city so far from the centre could make an international splash. […] I challenged them: are your goals big enough? Wellington may top ‘contentedness’ in lifestyle surveys, but what did the city dream of becoming? Without big shared dreams, cities (like people and organizations) are stuck in the status quo.

This got me thinking about how to apply Kevin’s insights for Wellington (“the heart of the edge of the world”) to Calgary and other cities that I love. It will be fun to apply Kevin’s insights to make our own cities stand out and be loved too, won’t it?

P.S. Kevin, thanks for that Canada joke. Ha ha. (smile)

P.P.S. Kevin was really passionate and charming in this speech. Much more watchable and “entertaining” than his speech at Google (even both were very insightful).

P.P.P.S. Misc: * Love Bilbao (thanks to Frank Gehry). Like Douglas Cardinal putting Red Deer on my map because of his St. Mary’s Church. * Singapore’s “disciplined approach” just rub me the wrong way (too paternal). * OK, may be it is stretching to say “Lexus parks itself – almost“. Here is a Gizmodo YouTube video demo of a Lexus parking itself. * Hmmm, City of Calgary’s website is boring indeed.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 2:02 AM and is filed under Calgary, design, Entrepreneurship, Lovemarks, Marketing, Science & Technology, Video, YouTube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to Cities are the new Black

  1. Tony says:
    Saturday, 14 April, 2007 at 2:30 PM

    I enjoyed your perspective on Kevin’s speech. I had watched the Google video the day before & wasn’t sure what to expect when I attended the Wellington event (I posted a BLOG about it too). I was thrilled with what Kevin & Saatchi offered.

    I spoke to the mayor afterwards and she was also impressed – now to see what the Heart of the Edge of the World can do!

    Another part of his speech that engaged me was when Kevin said “Cities are nouns, but New York is a verb!”

    Keep up the great posting. I really enjoy them.
    *******
    Hi Tony,

    Thanks for writing. It is always nice to hear from someone that is actually there experiencing the speech and event live. Compare to the Google speech, Keving was a lot more passionate and engaging at the Wellington event. I don’t know was it the room at Google but I think part of it (I hope I am not repeating myself here) may be because the Google audiences are much much more “numerical”/”fact-based”/”scientific” and part of the Lovemark concept may take a while to sink in for them.

    Great to hear that the Mayor was impressed. Love to see how the Mayor and council will take the ideas and challenge and run with it.

    Yeah, love the quote “Cities are nouns, but New York is a verb!” too.

    — Begin rant
    As an aside, I grew up in Hong Kong which I consider a great city. But in recent years, under the current and last administrations, they have to constantly say that Hong Kong is great international city. Darn it, before they messed up Hong Kong, we don’t need to remind people that HK is great, it just is. Now, they can remind people tills the cows come home but HK has certainly lost a lot of its former shine. OK, enough of me ranting.
    — End of rant (smile)

    Thanks for your comments and I enjoyed your post about Kevin’s speech as well.

    Cheers,
    Kempton