We gathered around a small meeting table in the crowded UT Press library on the seventh floor of a building overlooking Toronto’s Yonge Street. Almost six years after I had started writing my book on the Evolution of Great World Cities, the final stages of the publication process and marketing had at last been reached. The acquisitions editor, Jennifer, and publicist, Chris, were there with me, as we tried to work through the details. The main issue at hand was: Where would we launch the book?
Toronto, of course, would seem to be the obvious answer. I’ve been a professor at U of T for 13 years, and the book is being released under the Rotman-UTP Publishing imprint. The university is a hot bed for urban scholars – with folks like Richard Florida, Larry Bourne, Eric Miller, and Patricia McCarney, just to mention a few of many colleagues doing great work on cities. Moreover, there’s a substantial citizenry in Toronto engaged in urban issues, influenced perhaps by our legendary resident Jane Jacobs, or some of our talented former city mayors. Both the university’s Cities Centre and the Rotman School of Management would provide great launch venues. The book, however, will not be ready for release until after July 1, by which time I will have left for a sabbatical year working for the OECD in Paris.
Added to our deliberations was a generous invitation to launch the book down in Washington D.C. at the World Bank. Over the past three years, wearing a slightly different hat, I’ve been working closely with Dan Hoornweg and others in the urban anchor at the Bank. My skills in studying urban metabolism and greenhouse emissions from cities have aligned quite well with the Bank’s herculean efforts to encourage the sustainable development of cities. In helping Dan and his colleagues, often informally, I’ve had some intriguing experiences: late night car rides through the wilds of Jordan to meet with the City Manager of Amman; a morning rush on crowded subways and up into a back street office building, past photocopiers and ping-pong tables, to deliver a presentation on Beijing’s greenhouse gas emissions to Chinese government experts ; and accommodation at the South African soccer team’s World Cup hotel in Johannesburg on a trip to assist African cities. Listing out some of the other cities I’ve visited in the past two to three years: Kolkata, Nagoya, Hong Kong, Riyadh, Prague, Lisbon, Marseille, Boston, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, it seems I’ve had a few insights into today’s global cities.
My book, however, is more of a historical inquiry as to how and why certain cities become exceptionally wealthy. Ironically then, Washington D.C., doesn’t get that much attention in the book, for it has been well overshadowed by New York City. Indeed, in researching the book I was impressed by just how powerful and influential New York City became, especially in the late 1940s, following the Second World War. At the peak of its power, the city created a new world order around itself. It was New York lawyers and bankers who designed the new world institutions that brought security and economic stability to the post-war world. The United Nations was established in New York in 1945. New Yorkers were the principal architects of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Bank (initially housed in New York), and the International Monetary Fund. New York’s influence was far greater than that of the American capital, Washington, DC. In fact, in the 1920s Washington had relied substantially upon J.P. Morgan and Company to administer US foreign economic policy in Europe, China, and Latin America. Nonetheless, I will take the opportunity to give a presentation on the book in Washington D.C. this June.
So that then brings us to Paris as a possible venue. From July I’ll be in the city of love, for one year working on cities and green growth strategies at the OECD. Now Paris truly is a great world city, it features quite prominently in the book, and is even on the front cover! I delve into the history of Paris in several places. The city was the leading cultural and intellectual centre of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, graced by incredible thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. During this era, Paris was also very much a creative city, spawning the magnificent Gothic style of architecture. Then there was the amazing Mississippi bubble of the 1720s, created by the flawed genius of John Law, which saw some 30,000 foreigners flooding into Paris to speculate in his ‘get rich quick’ scheme. The bursting of such bubbles actually reveals a few key insights into how markets really work, as I explain in the book. Later, in the nineteenth century Paris tussled with London to become the world’s pre-eminent financial centre, but although there were times when Paris prevailed by some measures, France had the tendency to end up on the wrong side of a war just at the critical point in history. On reflection then, perhaps Paris isn’t the place to launch the book – it doesn’t come off so well – and moreover, my French speaking ability is quite limited.
London, however, is the star city in the book – a city that has been oozing with wealth for centuries. I recount tales such as the story of Dick Whittington, the amazing recovery of London’s economy after the Great Fire or 1666; and the incredible economic transformation of the city through nineteenth century infrastructure investments – all of which help to explain some of the most important concepts I develop in the book. Given that I’m intimately familiar with London (as a graduate of Imperial College) it seems like the ideal city to launch a book on great world cities!
Christopher Kennedy is the author of the newly released The Evolution of Great World Cities.
