What Makes a City Thrive

Oh throughout the ages cities have formed the heart of our societies originally developing in highly fertile regions as centers of trade the cities of today are home to more than half of our planet's population and play a more fundamental role in shaping our progress than ever before transcending the ages as cities must continually flex adapt and evolve if they are to remain the productive and thriving centers that billions of us call home from access to housing and transportation to the availability of jobs and education this is what it takes for a city to truly thrive in our ever-changing world [Music] for thousands of years it was geography that dictated where cities developed the earliest cities grew as defensive settlements along trade routes on sites that offered reliable access to water and fertile land Babylon and Memphis now a part of Cairo in Egypt thrived thanks to the abundance of fertile land around the Euphrates and Nile rivers being at the center of the Mediterranean allowed Rome to dominate the region through trade and military strength while Paris took advantage of his position on the cen and its access to both the Atlantic and central France to become the dominant city in the region while our cities have long been centers of regional influence it was the Industrial Revolution that expanded the sphere of influence a city could have as technology began to develop millions began moving into urban areas attracted by the opportunities these centres offered to understand more we spoke to mark versi and Lynn Smith of Aviva investors managers of large scale real estates and infrastructure investment projects well the Industrial Revolution was all about automation factories getting much more machines use of chemicals and so what it meant is factories needed to be in places that had good hubs of transport the cities that thrive then were London Amsterdam - had that access by boat which enabled the factories to be positioned right in those cities the impact was quite extreme suddenly you had a huge influx of people and they needed to be accommodated so suddenly a city had to grow develop so there was a huge strain on everything the city had hospitals were in higher demand Transport was in higher demand but fundamentally housing and the other thing that helped is there in the export market by being in those locations you can export all around the world so textiles was the big boom yeah particularly in those markets it became very difficult and the cities themselves had to change suddenly planning became a big thrust off walked a city bit Wars and they had to start planning out streets of Paris is a really good example of that where they developed the yarn decimals and actually had a network standing out from the Arc de Triomphe in a sort of series of of circles and concentric circles suddenly Town Planning became really really crucial if you didn't actually plan your city your city didn't work it failed fundamentally as industry took hold around the world a city's ability to move materials and the many products they created became key to their success Detroit and Pittsburgh in the United States boomed during this period and throughout the 20th century access to railroads and the Great Lakes allowed raw materials to flow into the city and products manufactured by their automotive and steel industries could reach markets far beyond their home states cities have to continually adapt to changing demand in the economy what happened in Detroit is all the skilled labor actually moved out of Detroit the increased automation of the manufacturing process changed the whole way the auto bills were built cars started getting imported and Detroit is now an area of huge unused buildings now things are in cities are changing rapidly again today instead of iron ore being the commodity you need it's now talented people with the connected world that we live in today talented people can live wherever they want what cities need to do now is attract people who want to live there to work there to play there and to learn they're the talent that people have to come up with new ideas innovation particularly in the fields of science is what businesses are looking for today Automation that's happening in all the processes means that the lowly skilled workers can be replaced by machines so what you're really looking for now is that higher education talent by adapting and reinventing themselves to attract new industries urban centers of all sizes can transform themselves into thriving centers of innovation and secure their success into the future when San Francisco opened up to new industries the city and wider bay area completely transformed today it is recognized one of the world's leading technology hubs needing to diversify its economy in response to a manufacturing crash in the 1990s large parcels of former industrial land in Melbourne were developed into mixed-use precincts leading to a boom in inner-city residential and commercial space and giving the city a competitive edge over its rivals in attracting new and expanding industries Dublin saw its outlet change when the government began offering tax credits and incentives to large corporations allowing the likes of Google Facebook eBay and PayPal to establish their European headquarters in the Irish capital if you can create a hub for an industry in a city then you'll attract a lot of talent that worked in that industry to come work there in Cambridge right now we have created a hub around the station which is becoming a big IT hub globally we've got Microsoft there Apple there and lots of other businesses are increasingly coming to work in that area so it's really becoming known for that sort of IT expansion obviously you've got a fantastic University there and that gives ability to attract that talent straight out of university retain it in the city became is also great as a great cultural spot so people have great lives there it's cheaper to live there schools hospitals so it's kind of got everything staff retention is a huge cost to any business and keeping them happy and investing in their welfare and their well-being leads to lower staff turnover so you have to offer them job expansion creativity so you have to continually evolve and expand thinking ahead and encourage people to progress their career in one area so the cities of the future are not necessarily the largest cities anymore it really is about the infrastructure the connectivity they have as well as that access to talented resource that's the most important feature now it's a really difficult question how cities can keep themselves sustainable we've got all kinds of examples of where that hasn't happened so we need to look to the future what are the trends that are out there I think as long as you're where there's good universities the talent is flowing you've got an opportunity to be successful but if you don't keep attracting the right type of industries to come in then anything can happen and that's the great example of Detroit obviously future-proofing obviously I mean it's key but we need to look within our buildings as well as what's happening in the wider infrastructure in a city london has reinvented itself many times over the years through the first Industrial Revolution the second and now you've got a thriving city in London which is a massive service industry for the entire world so London is probably the best example of a global city that's managed to reinvent itself through the ages the main asset London has is the route is the access to talented resource and a huge diverse range of people who live in London now it tracks people from all over the world come and work particularly in the city but also all of the service industries that are locating headquartered in London cities generate most of the tax revenue in every country so you have to have cities performing at their best that's where most the people work so what you need to have is successful industries which then produce the tax revenue to support the whole economy and the whole country so the city is the vital organ of the entire country [Music] the best that about my job is actually when you see people coming in and you see people enjoying it you look at something like Kings Cross and you know I've watched that development for 25 years and the first time I visited there it was very sterile not a lot of people and now you go along you've got kids playing in fountains there is you'll go going on on the steps at the canal it's very vibrant and there's people enjoying the public realm and then you have the corporate occupiers mingling throughout and the whole thing just works and for me that's that's what makes me get out of bed in the morning the impact we can have on society is the most exciting thing when we look at some of the schemes we've invested in so a 300 million pound development in Manchester we're changing something iconic which is the Granada studios where Coronation Street was filmed in the UK and we're now making that a multi-use office residential leisure centre which is where people really want to live work play and learn all in one building and that is a great example of the city of the future the role cities play in our everyday lives and the economic and cultural influence they now exert means they are more important than at any other time in human history and as our world continues to evolve only cities that harness the powers of talent clusters and scale will thrive [Music] to learn more about what makes a city thrive download the Aviva investors white paper at the link below if you enjoyed this video and would like to get more from the definitive video channel for construction subscribe to the b1m [Music] you

Channel: The B1M

Views: 336,009

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, aviva, aviva investors, cities, housing, transport, london, king's cross, kings cross, manchester, granada studios, cambridge, microsoft, apple, melbourne, dublin, google, facebook, ebay, paypal, san francisco, detroit, pittsburgh, automation, industrial revolution, automotive, paris, technology, babylon, memphis, cairo, egypt, mediterranean, rome, france, AECOM, EY

Id: n64jUfc2Ll4

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2019