What are the Challenges and Opportunities for Localism in times of Geo-political change?

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Transcript

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CityTalk

CityTalk Nov 18 2024

What are the Challenges and Opportunities for Localism in the Times of Geo-Political Change?

Mary W Rowe Hi, everybody, it’s Mary Rowe. We had a bit of a technical glitch there. I was hoping to show you a really jazzy video encouraging you to come to the summit next week or whenever it is, two weeks from now in Ottawa. We have a couple of things we’re launching on social, so, you know, stay tuned. Maybe we’ll show it at the end when the tech guys figure out how to actually do it. We often challenge people to identify the music that was just playing. I think I know, but there’ll be somebody else in the chat who will know too. So, if you know what that piece of music was… You’re all too young to remember Name That Tune. So, we’re asking you to name that tune. It was a nice, lovely piece, Wendy, and I’m sure that I will see this lovely teaser video, maybe at the end, for the summit. But just a plug, we are doing the second annual State of Canada’s Cities Summit… or for Zita’s benefit, Cities and Community Summit December 5/6 in Ottawa. If you haven’t planned to come, please plan to come. It’s really, I think, as this topic today underscores, it’s really a pivotal moment in terms of how we understand basically the way federalism works, I think. As we see a different kind of shift happening south of the border and whether or not we’ll see a similar shift here North of the 49th. But either way, there’s a moment that politics is bringing to the fore, but we also see economically it’s true – thinking about how we are building communities from the ground up, how are we going to actually finance the infrastructures that we require? Are we creating the kinds of places that actually enable economic, social, environmental flourishing? And that’s why people come to CityTalk and I appreciate very much for joining us today. I happen to be in Toronto today. The Urban Institute operates across the country. We have staff across the country, as you know. But I happen to be here, which is the traditional territory, well covered by two treaties, the Williams Treaty and Treaty 13, so it is actually ceded territory in Toronto, unlike other parts of the country. And it is the ancestral lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnawbe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, and home now to the Métis, Inuit, and First Nations communities and the legacy of colonialism. Maybe this is a moment where we will have that conversation again too, because so much of the roots of federalism in Canada are actually vestiges of what a colonial climate was, or colonial regime looks like. So, thank you for joining us, and I’m going to ask my fellow panelists to put their cameras on so you can see they’re here in the flesh. We always ask encourage people to come on the chat. So, if you’re a lurker and you’ve been coming to CityTalk, you know, we have hundreds of people that come on CityTalk every week, and if you’re one of those people that sits by the edge of your desk and just listens, great. Maybe you’re having a cup of tea and you’re in Vancouver, or maybe you’re eating your lunch if you’re in central Canada, or maybe you’re having afternoon tea if you’re in Newfoundland. We encourage you to participate in the chat. It’s a very lively thing. And so, if you’ve never actually dipped your toe and put yourself into the chat, why not do it today? And you will see lots of questions get posed there and lots of answers get put there, lots of people put connections and links and it’s a whole parallel universe in the chat, so don’t let me down chatters. As you always do, liven us up over there. I watch the chat, I feed into the chat as best I can… to our esteemed panel members to augment the conversation, but I don’t think they’re going to lack for things to talk about today. Just saying. So, we had a momentous event a couple of weeks ago. A number of us on this call are dual citizens or were American citizens or were Canadian citizens. Nothing happens, I think in the United States that doesn’t affect Canada. What was Trudeau’s famous adage? It’s like sleeping next to an elephant. I can’t quite remember it, but it was, this is Trudeau senior, something like that. So, we watch with great interest what happens electorally down there. And we have. And that’s why Bruce is a fellow at CUI, and Richard’s a longtime friend of CUI. It’s why we look really carefully at what legislative initiatives are taking place in the United States, what’s happening with tax reform, what’s happening with the relationship between the federal government and state governments, what’s happening with local leadership, regional leadership. All of the things that our colleagues are engaged in, we learn in Canada and we hope we do some things right and share with you, so… and Jacquie’s coming in because of the tech piece and how she’s seeing that playing out in communities across North America, and I feel like in many ways, this is a continental conversation, except we don’t have Mexico. But this is a lot of what we will be talking about in Ottawa, is how are we going to be investing in our communities of place so that they can thrive? And what is the geopolitical reality of that? So thanks for joining CityTalk. Bruce put a piece out last week. I’m going to come to you first, Bruce, and then Richard. What’s that expression? Age before  beauty. I’m going to go to our American pals first for them to kind of offer a bit of an opening comment. But Bruce, at the end of your thing last week, and I hope my colleagues will post it in the chat, you quoted Moynihan, and you said – “Federalism is not a managerial arrangement that the farmers hit upon because the country was big and there were no telephones: Federalism was a fundamental expression of the American idea of covenant.” I know I will have constitutional scholars on this call, Canadian constitutional scholars. I don’t know if Alex Flynn’s here, I don’t know who else is here, maybe Natalie DeRossier is here. They will put into the chat how they think federalism was birthed in Canada. But it is certainly something that we wrestle with here, about how federalism is working. And as you’re suggesting, you’re seeing a dramatic shift, I guess you’re seeing one. You’re going to tell us whether we’re going to see a dramatic shift. So, Bruce, nice to have you back on CityTalk and lay it on us, and then I’ll go to Richard and then Zita and Jacquie.

Bruce Katz Mary, wonderful to see you. Wonderful to see everyone else. I’m calling from a witness protection program in New York City, just waiting for the Department of Justice to crash my door. So, this is a radical moment, right? And it is chaotic, it is unpredictable, it is uncertain. If you follow what Donald Trump said during the election, and I take him and his colleagues very seriously, this is a complete upending of federalism as we know it in the United States. On the agenda right now is a radical upheaval of tax policy, unraveling health insurance, the housing ecosystem, imposing of tariffs, deporting of millions of immigrants, a rollback of climate rules, and the Inflation Reduction Act, a new Department of Government Efficiency, whatever the hell that means, under Elon Musk. Buckle up, this is going to be a bumpy ride. And I don’t think anyone is really quite prepared for what’s about to happen here. To juxtapose this a week before the election, the economists put out a special report about the United States, envy of the world, right? In the early 1990s, we were 2/5 of the G-7 GDP, we’re now a half. We have outpaced other economies on output and productivity and all the rest. And cities and metropolitan areas have really led that. If you think about the A.I. revolution, if you think about semiconductors reshoring, if we think about defense manufacturing, if you think about anyone who is solving our various, you know, local and state and national challenges, you have to start with the local and move on up. So, you know, the message I put forward last week is the return of new localism. In 2017, within two weeks of Donald Trump winning the 2016 election, Jeremy Nowak, a close friend, and I started writing The New Localism, which basically was about how cities thrive and survive during a period of populism by basically understanding and elevating their various networks of business, civic, political and other leaders, and unlocking the full amount of capital and resources that they have at their disposal. We are back to that moment right now. We are back to a moment of city and metropolitan organizing in the US, both to respond to what’s happening in Washington, D.C., but frankly, to fully unlock this tremendous set of assets and advantages that district cities and metropolitan areas have. So that’s the main message. That’s the sort of starting salvo here. Places will be very distracted by what is about to happen day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out. They need to be determined to navigate this new volatility. And so, yes, respond to what’s happening on a daily basis. I haven’t seen who Trump appointed today. Bozo the Clown, who the hell knows? But stay focused on amplifying your own competitive advantages, realizing a level of inclusive and sustainable prosperity. We will somehow, somehow get through all this. But I think we have to take them at their word and just prepare for what is going to be really a radical remake of our Federal Republic.

Mary W Rowe Thanks, Bruce. As you say, it’s pictures of 11, that’s the phrase we always use when there’s news breaking all the time. But we also wonder whether there is an opportunity, I guess that’s the question always. You know, I’m one of those people that always wonders about the opportunity and wonders whether this will force what you suggested in your piece, which was a new localism. Maybe, let’s see. Richard, over to you. Another dual citizen operating both in Canada and in the U.S., and around the world. What is your perspective about the reality that we are going to be encountering, at least for the next four years, maybe longer?

Richard Florida I mean, I look like a genius because I moved to Toronto.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, well, there you go. Bruce, there’s a home for you in Canada.

Richard Florida I told you this, but my kids identify as Canadian. You know, I learned this during the Olympics when the American in me was rooting for an American, my kid said, “Why are you doing that, Dad? We’re Canadian and Toronto is our home”. So, something in a seven and nine year old’s mindset, and I don’t think it’s just that they were born here, caused that. But, you know, here’s something that you didn’t mention, Mary, and Bruce didn’t mention. The Wizard behind the throne, the Oz and in all this, is a Canadian, isn’t he? The paymaster in all of this, the one who put him in office, the owner of Tesla, Space X and X, is a South African who migrated to Canada, who’s a Canadian. Born to at least one Canadian parent, if I’m correct, if not both. And who I just learned this week, the co-parents of all of his children are all Canadian. So, you know, maybe we’re not as immune to this, and if you look at what he says, and I think he’s much more important to look at than the useful idiot in the White House, sorry, now they’re coming after me. If you look at the two South Africans who are behind this, one of whom I’ve met, Peter Teal being the other one, he says the next domino is Canada. He said the next domino is that the current leadership of Canada has to go. And so, look, we are anything but immune to this. We are fully implicated in this. That said, I’m terrified at certain things. I mean, the mass deportation terrifies me. The use of the Justice Department, and Bruce wasn’t joking, the attacks on parts of the media, that terrifies me. But I’m not so sure they will mess up cities that bad, and here’s why. Even the great brain Elon, and Peter too, have come to conclude that despite the fact that they try to relocate everything to Texas and Florida, that ain’t working. They figured out right away that it would be impossible to replicate the innovation ecosystem of the Bay Area and the entertainment ecosystem of Los Angeles. And then, you know, a president, if we must call him, the first thing he did, one of the first things he did was pick up the phone and call Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul in New York and say, look, I’m going to work with you to rebuild New York City and make it great again. So, I think Bruce is absolutely apt. And, you know, I wrote about this after the last Trump election, how we needed to reutilize our federalism, how we got that all wrong in the States, how we’ve given the national government far too much power. And you know, Biden had an opportunity to undo some of that and he didn’t. But I think there’s opportunity to do interesting stuff at the city and metropolitan level. And it might not be as bad. That may be … I hate to call it a silver lining, it’s not a silver lining, it’s not a green shoot, but there might be other areas that are far worse – damage can be inflicted, than what might be done to cities and metropolitan areas.

Mary W Rowe Yeah, I should just flag, just for the benefit of everybody listening, first of all, back to the chat … Adjust your settings, guys and gals, make sure you’re writing to everyone, because there are toggle switches and if you only went to hosts and panelist, that’s all it goes to, and we need to go to everyone. So, both Bruce and Richard, you both posted stuff and you need to repost now to everyone. You know, I always want to just remind folks that cities and communities are often fundamentally nonpartisan, and they aren’t necessarily, the elected leadership are often not affiliated with any party at all. So, I just always want to flag that and remind people that, you know, lots of Republicans will be on this CityTalk and there are lots of people on the right of the political spectrum, whatever that means now, who are deep, deep, committed believers in localism and in communities. So, I always just want to add that caveat, that the personalization of political life I have watched during my lifetime, and it wasn’t always thus, you know, we didn’t always have this dynamic that we’ve got now. And so, I’m cautioning us to not… it’s easy to turn it into these personality pieces, but in fact, what we are talking about, and I appreciate what both Richard and Bruce are flagging, is that there are public policy initiatives that are being driven by people around the administration or in the administration. But don’t forget, there’s also tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people that work within the bureaucracy and who will have their own particular perspectives and history and background and be it will be interesting to see how that dynamic plays. I’m going to come to you next, Jacquie, and then Zita, you’ll do clean up. In terms of what you’re seeing Jacquie, you were educated in the U.S., I know you work in the US. What are you seeing as the sort of… and you presumably know the tech folks that Richard just referred to because it’s your world. So why don’t I pass it to you, and then I’ll go to Zita.

Jacqueline Lu And actually, I am a recovering public servant. I spent almost three years working in the New York City, you know, in New York City government advancing technology. I think what’s interesting about this moment when I think about the shift in the administration in the U.S., and this topic of polarization, is that at least part of why there’s so much polarization in the sort of ether in the world is actually because of AI tech and algorithms, right? And I think that’s partly what makes the shift in administration so interesting because the Biden administration has actually been much more proactive in policy making and ensuring that AI and tech actually doesn’t exacerbate existing inequities and prevent harm. So you have the executive order on the use of A.I.. There’s a there’s a blueprint for an A.I. Bill of Rights. And so, I think what is interesting is that we already know, and when we look at the current moment and how conversations have been polarized, because of honestly like algorithmic amplification and this play for attention and eyeballs and, you know, all you Canadians here me may remember also, you know, conversations like tech was… There was polarization around how technology shows up in in communities and city making with the Sidewalk Labs project here in Toronto. I think something to think about is that, you know, technology in the context of city making, it no longer just runs on screens and devices, it actually enables outcomes in actual places for people. And I think that is an interesting thing to think about in this opportunity of thinking about like, well, you know, there’s national and international movements around improving and regulating technology and ensuring it sort of serves a public benefit. But I also heard very clearly, I just came back from Barcelona, from the Smart City Expo World Congress, where I heard from a large number of municipalities and cities that, you know, technology moves too fast for regulation anyway, and regulators are too far removed from the needs of the people, because they’re acting at national scales or international scales, to be able to truly consider their needs. So, I’m going to sort of like move to what I think is an opportunity in this moment, which is, you know, how can we actually think about cities and local communities actually taking this issue of what do we want tech to do for our communities in our cities and move that locally? And, you know, because, especially now, you know, when we think about city building, A.I. systems are not just how we get our information, but they’re also parts of urban infrastructure that are being used to provide services and define place-based outcomes. We know we’re not going to get to sustainable development goals, net zero, without data collection optimization sensors. And I think the question is, how can we actually evolve practices of city making to include thinking about technology, especially in the absence of, you know, shifting… Basically, we shouldn’t leave it up to the regulators because honestly, they are a little far from the communities that we’re all trying to serve. So that’s…

Mary W Rowe Thanks, Jacquie. I know there’s this whole thing about being … there are techno optimists out aren’t there, who think that technology is the answer. And it was an interesting, sort of confusing narrative, I think, in the electoral process where there was sort of speculation. I mean, some of my Republican friends really believe that the Democrats are being completely captured by tech. And yet, as Richard pointed out, you know, it’s the tech system that is … the very, very successful tech entrepreneurs that backed Trump. Anyway, we’re going to come back to that. Zita, I want to come to you next, and I’m afraid to do this because I have never tried to share my screen on a Zoom event with this many people, but, you know, let’s just all of us use our imagination. It’s not that hard. I wanted to put up the electoral map that we all stared at on November 5th/6th, and then couldn’t bear looking at it again. But even, regardless of who ended up on top, what you see in the United States is extraordinary polarization in terms of where people’s political affinity is. And the Canadian map has equal kinds of comparable polarization. You and I have just spent the last five years running around saying the urban/rural divide is not real. It’s the same conversation – local economies build from the ground up, whether it’s a small community or a neighborhood within a big city. But boy oh boy oh boy, when you look at that U.S. electoral map and you see the coasts all one color and the heartland, all the other color. What? What? I mean, you are an advocate for places, but particularly for rural places. What is your takeaway in terms of what we’re seeing in the U.S. and in terms of what you think the implications are going to be for your work?

Zita Cobb Well, I think it makes Nicolaus Schafhausen look prescient. Nicolaus Schafhausen, Mary, as you know, is an art curator, and in 2005, did an enormous art show called … ready for it … Populism. So, if we didn’t pay attention to the contemporary artists then, can we all please start paying more attention to them now? That show was an incredible show, and I feel like it’s just unfolding. I mean, this is a  lumpy soup that we’re kind of all swimming around in, and I hate to use these words because you shouldn’t say things that you don’t think are true, but are we in a post-truth time? So, I think it’s a … that’s a part of the lump in the soup. And I think another lump in the soup is the primacy of money and the behavior of money. And Jacqueline talked about, you know, the algorithms that, we make our tools and then our tools make us. So our tools are making us. And I think the financial economy has outgrown the real economy and sort of run off by itself, and the pace of the rollout of AI is maybe outpacing our human capacity to understand what it is and what’s happening to us. So, it’s very confusing. We all want something to hold on to. And, you know, it is very distressing to me that the magnetic North Pole moves 55km a year. And in 3000 years, the Polaris will no longer be the North Star. So, what do we steer by? I think we can only steer from where we are in the places we are. And when I say … Mary, you and I say this all the time, we’ve got to stop using words like the urban/rural divide. I think we’ve just got to think about the places we live. There is no question, because of the behavior of money primarily, the outcomes in people’s actual lives tend to be very different in small and medium sized communities. So, in the Canadian context, we have 4434 communities and as best I can figure, only about 500 of them have access to commercial banking. So that makes for a lot of stranded assets and a lot of people who wake up in the morning and don’t want to hear someone on the news saying the economy is doing fine, when their economy isn’t doing so frickin’ fine. I think I just swore on your podcast, Mary. And so … [frickin’ is fine, I think it passes our standard]… Good. Good.  Yeah. Yeah. And so, I think what matters now, I mean, I think all we have to steer by is place. It’s the only way that we can organize and do anything, it’s the place of all action. And so, where else would we start? I also think that place is probably the only way politics works, is closer to home. Now, we are not in small places or big places or any place, immune to whatever, I don’t know, Musk-oil, or whatever the heck he’s serving up on any given day, but let’s just call it Musk-oil. And so, I think the opportunity in this is for us in the places we live, like Chicken Run – Them chickens got to organize. And so, the way those chickens need to organize is to see ourselves as stewards of our own economies and our own places. And I think we have to build… and they don’t exist in many places that I have seen. We have to build the collaborative structures in the local places we live to be better stewards, and starting with our economy and maybe even before that, starting with the narrative. And so, you know, buddy “what’s his fellow”, or whatever his name is, you know, when I came home and started to do community economic development work, the then mayor … said to me, he said, it will be very helpful to you to remember that you have two ears. In one ear, you should hear good things, and in the other ear you should be slightly deaf. So, I’m choosing to be slightly deaf to the din of what’s going on in the kind of words that are not helpful out there. And I think in our local places, we have the opportunity to choose to speak to each other differently. And I think that will be thing number one. And thing number two is let’s figure out, what are the levers of our economy and what are the innate, what conditions do we need to accelerate and amplify, to get the local economy to work and to weave it into the local and the national? And I think… there’s an organization in the U.S. that has the best tagline ever. It’s resources for coherence. So, I think it’s time for us, we have a hope of getting coherence in our local places, but it’s going to require us to walk away from the computer and talk to each other. And there’s a great opportunity in that.

Mary W Rowe On that collaborative note, let’s put everybody on, Wendy, pull everybody back onto the screens so that we can all make sure that I’m looking at everybody and speakers so that I can see everybody. And open your mikes and let’s just have a chat amongst us all. I have a question about, I mean, I’m hearing three things that I want us to sort of unpack. You guys decide. I think there’s one question about money. Is big money, capital money, is that going to be… Bruce, you often talk about the wall of money. And it was, during the Biden administration, it was a wall of public money. Are we now going to see a wall of private money? And what does that look like? That’s the first thing. The second thing is, what is going to happen to public spending and particularly public investment? In three weeks, we’re going to talk all about infrastructure. A lot of what we looked at was the Biden administration’s enormous investment in infrastructure and the potential that there is to create justice and equity out of those kinds of investments. That’s going to be gone, I guess. And then the third thing is what kinds of local initiatives do we need? And you’re talking about organizing. I think Jacquie would argue that her tech world can enable organizing in a nanosecond, that we could actually see a total blossoming of engagement as we have through the tech. So, let’s start, first of all, with money. Can I hear from Bruce and Richard? Where’s the money going to be and how’s it going to flow? More financialization of housing, for instance. Less.

Bruce Katz I mean, first of all, we’re in a period now where, you know, it’s not entirely clear. Okay. Let’s just, you know, there’s a first wave of the Biden investments, infrastructure, chips and science, Inflation Reduction Act, and, which was never really discussed, a radical expansion of the Department of Defense appropriations, because of Ukraine and China particularly. So, when you think about that bucket of large investments, trillions, I don’t think the military budget will be, you know, radically rolled back. He just appointed several China hawks to his cabinet, even though he’s also an isolationist. I mean, part of the thing, Mary, is to try to bring coherence out of this is pretty difficult. Right?

Mary W Rowe Zita’s favourite word. Don’t look to the U.S. for coherence Zita, turn the media off … Keep going Bruce …

Bruce Katz But I think the way we read this right now is, defense budget will remain very high, and this is where a lot of our technological innovation is basically subsidized. Chips and science, I don’t think will be rolled back. It was bipartisan in the Senate. The U.S. wants to assure, particularly in the semiconductor industry. With Musk, it’s hard to know how to think about the Inflation Reduction Act because, you know, Trump was against electric vehicles until he was for electric vehicles and batteries and all the rest. So, we have to watch that space, irrespective because so much of the Inflation Reduction Act is around tax incentives. The signal, really, to American cities and metropolitan areas is you need to think about public capital beyond grants. It’s about tax incentives, it’s about government loans. Will they privatize Fannie and Freddie. It’s around procurement. So, you need to grow more capacity and competence in your cities, not just in the public sector, but in public, private, civic. So, whatever happens, you’re able to master the federal funding, but then unlock a lot of local and other funding. So, I think this is about money. You know, I mean, I think this is about, the resorting of federalism will be very much about what do the feds pay for and how do they pay for those services and goods. And then, the rest of the nation then has to adjust and adapt and find radically new ways of financing what’s necessary for public, private, and civic.

Mary W Rowe Infrastructure investment creates jobs. I mean, I would have thought, I mean, Richard, what’s your take on this in terms… and it creates working class jobs, it creates good middle class jobs. So, do you have a sense of where the money is going to flow or not flow or, what’s your crystal ball?

Richard Florida I mean, I think Bruce is spot on that they’re not going to cut the defense budget, that a lot of this has to do with China. I would say chips and science also has to do with China and about Taiwan and what they’re willing to do for China with Taiwan. So, I think reshoring of semiconductors has a lot to do with international geopolitical relations. I think you’ve got to watch Doge. I think that it’s not a red herring, and I think that’s about… and I wouldn’t be surprised if they default or if they do something that triggers default and not renew the debt ceiling. I think it’s austerity. I mean, it’s not going to cut the defense budget, it’s austerity budget. They’re going to cut the kinds of things that help the working people and the least advantaged people. That said, look, this is not as bleak as many other times in modern American history. I mean, this is not the decline of cities in the 60s and 70s. These are not cities flat on their back suffering from massive urbanization and deindustrialization. You know, cities have some momentum, as Bruce has said, metros have real momentum. And so, yeah, I think this is a shifting point, but it’s going to be hard to undo all of it. What I would say on this, for all of us concerned with Canada, let’s project out a year and see when the next domino falls. If we if we believe the people we just talked about and their next target …

Mary W Rowe Canada is next  …

Richard Florida Is Canada. Let’s do…  Let’s take Bruce at his word, and Jacquie and Zita, and let’s put, you know, coherence and rationality there and get ready in Canada. The other thing that’s… look at every place has its limits and its thorns, but our system is much less…. Well, it’s nice I said our, our system is much better at dealing with this because the provinces, whether we like our province or not, we like their leadership or not, our provinces are not as horrendously divided as the US at the national level. They are divided, and our provinces have relatively more power. So, the federal government can’t really inflict as much pain. One last note, sorry. I think the other thing to look at in the US is, one of our big anchors in Canada and in the US, in urban environments, are universities. They are serious about going after universities. This is no joking matter when Trump says, you know, I am going to use the full power of the federal government. I am going to cut off spending, I’m going to cut off their resources, you know, I am going to use whatever power in the Justice Department to go after taxpayer endowments. He’s serious about this. So, the other thing at the local and regional level, dealing with this is a big deal. They could create a lot of problems for these very important urban anchors.

Mary W Rowe I mean, I think there’s also a question about where the research money will go, and again, how implicated is any of the work that we’re all doing in terms of if we lose the capacity to actually determine best practice and have the data evidence and all that kind of thing? Just going over to you, Jacquie, in terms of the power of the market, I mean, you live in a very entrepreneurial transactional market. That’s what the tech market is. But you’re all… not to generalize, but there are lots of libertarians in that space. Do you have a sense of how local communities could be engaging differently using tech and using the kinds of expertise that you’re suggesting? For instance, those large climate goals won’t be won’t be realized without engaging tech. But there’s this ambivalent thing we’ve got going on with AI and whether or not AI is a positive or a negative, and can local communities benefit or are they going to be taken advantage of? Where do you fall on that?

Jacqueline Lu I mean, I fundamentally believe that part of that sort of ambivalence or where do we engage, is AI good or not, is that we don’t do a good job as a society of actually surfacing what those tradeoffs are. We know that, you know, when we think about physical AI, thank you Bruce, for that article. When we think about physical A.I., people have mental models that as they go around their city, that data is being taken and it’s being used for something. But we, there’s no common model of like, well, how is that actually being used to improve the outcome in this place? You know, like we might, as individuals, use consumer technology or decide to give up our privacy because we’re getting an immediate benefit, like our smartphones are probably the most, you know, like the most like invasive thing we could have possibly brought into our lives when we think about our digital rights. So, I think where… it’s not dissimilar in other sort of forms of, I think, city building, where, when you’re asking people to provide something, to contribute input, can we get really clear on what the benefits actually are and what the outcomes actually are, so that they can actually have a rubric for making a decision as to whether this is a good or a bad thing. I think AI, and you know, it’s interesting because I think now with tech enabled, or AI enabled infrastructure, you know, we used to be able to say like let’s take Bloor bike lanes. Like, you know, we know that we’re prioritizing bikes because we took away a lane of traffic, and that’s like a physical thing that people can inspect and argue and have a conversation about. But when you’re talking about an intelligent traffic system that uses sensors and cameras and automatically adjusts the timing of the lights to reduce emissions, to reduce idling times, reduce traffic. Arguably also making prioritization decisions about how these city spaces are being used. But that is an un-inspectable process. And so, I think that, like, if the hope is to really think about, you know, how do we enable local action and local participation in how things like technology shape cities? And we have to do a much better job of actually like creating legibility around those processes. And I think that’s where, that a gap that I think we need to be thinking about if we want to sort of lean into enabling localism and sort of local participation in …

Mary W Rowe You know, my instinct on this is that we have to just grab it. But  … and I wonder if, I don’t know whether Bruce, you would agree with this, but, you know, was there, you know, you had the chaos of the first Trump administration and then when Biden came in, you feel, at least I observed, there’s a kind of “ohh phew”, you know. And does that then mean that people kind of sat back? And the dilemma now is you got to get back, you got to get back to the front of your seat. And that sitting back thing, Canadians sit back all the time. They think the government will come in and solve a whole bunch of things. And we’re always trying, those of us that have worked in the place are always saying “Get in the front of your seat”. So, Jacquie, do you think, can we empower ourselves to take more risks in Canada? Could we at the local level, even at the neighborhood level, folks, could we be taking more initiative ourselves to use tech in an enabling way, to put up the safeguards, to get the coherence that Zita is desperate for? Can’t we drive that from the ground? I

Jacqueline Lu I think the demand is there. I think the demand and the desire to engage in that conversation is there. I don’t think the organizational capacity in government is necessarily ready.

Mary W Rowe Where? In any order of government?  

Jacqueline Lu In a lot of places. I think that it’s, you know, I think there’s a, you know… well I mean of course we can, I think the Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto, which is where I work, like we saw that there is a grassroots demand, like there is a discussion, a desire to talk about, how does technology show up in our cities. But I also think that that showed that we don’t, like governments, local or place-based organizations don’t actually really know how to have that conversation. So, I think that there is a capacity building…

Mary W Rowe But, can we focus on building it? There’s a lot of chat about the distraction economy, and I’m here thinking, how do we account for the distraction economy? What does it take to do that? Can that be done at the local level? And can you build the capacity you’re just suggesting? Tallinn, Estonia is like the size of a dime, and somehow they were able to get ahead of this. Go ahead, Bruce. What were you going to suggest?

Bruce Katz Well, just quickly, then I want to hear from Zita. So, here’s a challenge for the U.S. and Canada. We think about organizing cities, every tub its own bottom, right? How do we think about organizing, you know, public, private civic networks, universities within cities and metropolitan areas? What I’m really taken by is some of the Nordic models of aggregating market power so that we can begin, for cities and metropolitan areas, to negotiate with large capital and big tech. So basically, this is Commune Invest, or KL in Denmark. We’ve got to get to that. And right now, the way we think about our constituencies of electeds or others, is you advocate for policy reform at your national or provincial level. We need a different sort of parallel path in our countries, which is more about market power and around routinizing, you know, smart capital stacks and smart approaches to technology deployment, so we can get to a completely… I mean, we are the driving forces of our nations. We don’t act like it, really.

Jacqueline Lu I just want to add, like just to chime in on Bruce, and in the US in particular, let’s talk about A.I.. There is a very strong coalition of more than 700 municipalities, grassroots organized by the city of San Jose and the Gov A.I. Coalition. And they are themselves, working across jurisdictional lines to develop best practices around deploying AI, and actually very deliberately engaging in activities with AI vendors to surface how those technologies are actually working. So, I completely, I’m like… you know, Nordic examples, that’s really useful, but I think there’s actually an American example of where jurisdictions are working very deliberately at that sort of network level on a specific issue, and that is a massive market. The Gov tech … like that is a massive amount of procurement.

Mary W Rowe So they self-organized, they didn’t the (unintelligible) inhibit them. Angela, could you repost your comment to everyone? It’s only gone to the host and the panelists, Angela from southeastern Manitoba. Zita, you know you could have, well, you’re from a province that did for years, have a certain kind of dependency on government. And you bucked that, and your whole initiative in Fogo and what you’re building for the network, is bucking that kind of “Wait, sit back. Wait”. And what is your reaction to what Bruce, and Richard, and Jacquie were suggesting about this kind of self-organizing momentum? Does that makes sense? Yes, yes and yes and yes, and I love Jacquie’s words about enabling eligibility. I think that’s… Mary, you will remember that we did a pilot project together that asked the question, how do we strengthen community economies? The reason that we focus so much on the economy is that we think economic dignity is a consequence of agency, and it all starts with that. If we don’t have… we don’t feel at least a little tiny bit secure in our economy, our ability to pay our rent, then, you know, we’re not going to make the best decisions when we go to the voting booth or go anywhere else. So, focusing on that, and the four levers that were identified in our pilot project was data. Data, data, data. I think if you go into any of the 4434 communities in our country and ask all of the people who live there “So what is your economy here, and how does money get in, and how does money get out, and who is here?”, I don’t think people know. I think making it visible is so important and it’s the beginning of coherence. I want to use coherence every sentence until I really annoy you. And then the other one was access to financial capital. Full stop. We can’t, I think Bruce is so right, it’s about how do we belong to the world and we belong to the world because the world is like one big market now. And so, we are not… you take Fogo Island or any other place. We can’t belong to the world by waiting to belong to Newfoundland, by waiting to belong to Canada, by waiting to belong to the world. You know, half of the people who come and stay at our inn, well, that came in 2024, were from the U.S. I’m expecting a whole lot more next year. And absolutely, maybe some of them… we want to grow our population to 6000. So that we’ve got room.

Mary W Rowe Go ahead, Richard.

Richard Florida I think this is really important. Look, I think one of the things we will see is not just migration to Canada from parts of the U.S. and parts of the world. I think we’re in the midst of climate migration, and it’s just starting but it’s happening. I mean, it is very hard to live in, you know, for the past 50 or 60 years in North America, in the U.S., we’ve heard about the flight from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. And that still is going on. But, you know, you’re dealing with temperatures now that are becoming, and storms, that are becoming unlivable. We’re already seeing data that indicates, you know, not just escaping climate, but people who want to afford a home are moving north. They’re moving to the old Rust Belt, Great Lakes cities. So, I think let’s get ready for that. Get ready for that, particularly in Canada. And it’s not just the divide, you know, I was talking to one of my sister in law’s about the divide in America, and no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, everyone can’t believe it. And we said we don’t like the idea of civil war, it’s a social war. I mean, it was a very potent insight. You know, ripping families apart, it’s ripping communities apart. Canada has less of that and it has less guns. It is a much more family friendly place. So, we are going to see more immigration. We’ll see some migration, a little bit of migration from the United States, but we’ll see more on a global scale. The other thing, in terms of let’s get ready, and this might not be popular, but, you know, four years of Biden and how many years of Trudeau, Mary, and how long have you and I, you more than me, you’ve enlisted me, talked about moving power, empowering the cities, new deal for cities, helping the cities, the federal government forging, and no one’s done bupkis. Why? I mean, right now we have, you know, a timeline where at least folks could do that, provide some pathway to give cities and metros more capacity to organize. Why haven’t the alternative, liberal, whatever Democrats, helped with that? It escapes me. I don’t have an answer. But I think in Canada, you know, the time to press for that is immediately, and say, you know, we see the handwriting on the wall. We see = it coming to us. Help us now.

Mary W Rowe You heard it here first, everybody. But, you know, we have seen, I think, this why I was kind of mentioning the part about the bureaucracy in the U.S., people who work inside government who are not part of the political cycle, hopefully learn and evolve and do the best they can and respond to their political masters, obviously. But I would say that in the bureaucracy at the federal level, there is, in Canada, there is a much greater understanding that you need to get money into smaller increments, into communities, and communities need to be held accountable for how they’re going to spend it, and that it not get, you know, watered down by the time it passes all the different inter-layers of provincial… So, I think there’s, it’s slow, but there’s a growing understanding that you need money in small communities.  

Richard Florida If you asked me what to do now, it would be that. If you asked me if I could do one thing to help this country get ready, it’s to do everything in our power over the next X months to make sure cities and metros, whatever we want to call them, urban agglomerations, have the most capacity to respond to what is likely, not necessarily likely to come at them. And don’t end up in the situation that the U.S. is in.

Mary W Rowe So we are hearing – how do you de-centralize? How do you build capacity? … so they know what they’re doing. Bruce, have you got another order to put in the water on this?

Bruce Katz I think this line really needs to be teased out. So, I’ve been thinking for some time in U.S. cities, how do you take Nordic examples, German examples, etc., on land value capture to basically, really understand the full, the scale of public capital that can be put to service? Atlanta has a new urban development corporation to do that in the service of affordable housing production, preservation. NYCHA, the New York City Housing Authority, is thinking about using excess land to fund capitalization needs. On a different score, in the state of Alabama, right? Red state, utilities, corporations, philanthropies have come together around opportunity zones, which will come back under Trump to basically, you know, get more than their fair share of tax advantaged capital for housing, etc.. So, we’ve got to take this moment for, you know, taking economic power and the assets that cities and, you know, a whole bunch of public authorities own, and really extract the max , right? Because there is going to be a retrenchment. We don’t entirely know what it’s going to look like, but there will be a retrenchment from the federal level. And the way to combat that is to finally get organized around …

Mary W Rowe Again, it’s sort of … It’s the same thing, Richard’s saying like, let’s leapfrog over the intermediaries then, and let’s start to get access to capital. So, Zita, back to your point, you know, again, this Canadian habit we have that we expect government to somehow level these playing fields and make things accessible, well maybe not. Maybe what we need is to aggregate amongst ourselves at the local level and then go to the markets straight, straight up.

Zita Cobb I think we have to split …  the table can only be set in the places we live. The only people who can set the table are the people who live there. Set the table – there’s a place for the province, there’s a place for the federal government, and these are the things we need. So, it comes back to coming together in the local places. And I think at a country level, the hardest thing for us to do is to accept the country that we are. And the country that we are, 89% of us that work in the private sector work for SMEs. So, we got to stop going around bemoaning the fact that we have too many SMEs. So, I mean, if I hear another public official say that, it’s going to be like the 10th time this week.

Mary W Rowe It’s one of the strongest assets of the Canadian economy.

Zita Cobb It is one of our assets. So, understand our assets. So, if we have to… we do have to develop our economy properly from the ground up and top down. And so how do we do that? We accept who we are. We figure out, how do we take these massive systems, like our banking system, and our telecom system, and our pension system, that are all waiting for us to grow a bunch of big companies to support? But that’s not who we are.

Mary W Rowe But let’s think about that for a second. We’re getting a question in the chat about this, about how do you actually attract the money when it’s into these smaller increments. So, what would this aggregation potentially look like? We’re never… I mean, we’re never going to get money to be as small as we want it to be, I guess. So are there other …

Zita Cobb It’s a question of plumbing, build the plumbing.

Mary W Rowe There’s land trusts, there’s credit unions, there’s alternate financial tools. Bruce, you’ve done a gazillion of them at the regional level in the U.S. Do we … Can we do them in Canada? Why can’t we?

Bruce Katz Yeah. The question I think is really what challenge do you want to resolve, right? In Copenhagen, when they did their, you know, public asset corporation, city and port, they used the revenues raised to build out their transit system. In Hamburg, they used the revenues raised to build out the port as a climate clean, net zero territory in their city. In England, they’re using transport for London to use those assets, around the transit and the tube stops, to basically support affordable housing. So, which, you know, every place has to have its own journey, and then the capital fits the journey. And I think that’s what we need to construct. I mean, we just haven’t done a damn good job of it in the U.S. and it could get to some of the stuff that Jacqueline was talking about, technological deployment, etc.. But capital, I don’t think, is the problem in some respects. It’s the organization of capital and the leveraging up of private and civic that we need to perfect.

Mary W Rowe Go ahead Richard and then Jacquie.

Richard Florida I think Canada has a lot of assets, and attractive assets, relative to the United States in an urban context. And I think it’s why I said at the outset, my kids identify as Canadian. It’s a nice place to grow up. It is family friendly. Not everyone, you know, there are too many guns, but not everyone in the second car is loaded up for bear with a gun. I think protecting the family friendliness of our cities and communities is equally as important, making sure that they remain safe and secure. Places where, you know, my kids took the subway with my wife to go see a Taylor Swift concert on Saturday night. I mean, that sounds trite and silly, but it’s not.

Mary W Rowe I know. It’s great.

Richard Florida It’s unbelievable. And, you know, I actually think, I did a conversation with our dear friend Greg Clark, and I think we concurred on this. The U.S. is going in the direction of, almost ensuring that its cities are not family friendly, that, you know, everyone lives in a one-minute city called the Suburban or exurban home, you know, with your gym, your screening room, your theater, your home office and all of this, I think doubling down, and Zita, you said something so profound. And it’s not just big cities. Big cities are just a bunch, an aggregation of neighborhoods, as this other person we knew, this urban theorist once said, many years ago. But making sure that our neighborhoods remain this kind of safe, civil place, this is a huge advantage in Canada. And every Canadian kind of knows that. I think we need to double down on that, too.

Mary W Rowe Back to … when you come to the summit in three weeks, guys, and these folks, few of them will be there, not all, but the opening session is “How Do You Make Canada Matter More?” And part of what we’ve been arguing with our international foreign policy colleagues is that we can make Canada matter more by making better places. Jacquie, last word to you and then I’ll go around for everybody to give us 30s on their last thoughts. Go ahead Jacquie. You start.

Jacqueline Lu Yeah. Making better places. I think that’s probably the main thing to think about is, you know, how do we enable that local action? How do we enable that capacity building to really laser focus on what matters to people on the street? I think when we talk about polarization, mistrust in government, all of these things, it actually comes down to, because people are not getting their water, trash is not getting picked up. So, like, I think if we can sort of really get at the local level down to making sure that people’s basic needs are really being met, and then people start feeling safe and confident in that, then actually there’s much more potential to be able to start getting permission to do the bolder placemaking things.

Mary W Rowe I want to not ask for permission. I want us to go and ask for forgiveness, right? Remember that lovely adage? Bruce, one minute to you. And then Zita and Richard, and then we’re out.

Bruce Katz Don’t ask for permission, God forbid. I mean, again, I think cities are networks. They’re not governments, and that’s really the full manifestation of their power. And once we get to that, and we see it in certain cities around the United States, particularly around industrial and innovation. If you want to see, you know, a super organized place, go to Columbus, Ohio, which is now one of the, you know, the new semi-conductor hubs. So, in a way that tells us, you know, what full organization can look like and then places need to identify, prioritize, you know, where we need to put their capital.

Mary W Rowe 30 seconds to you Zita.

Zita Cobb I want to clarify that only one third of Canadians live in places that have more than a half million people. But to say about Canada, it is a tiny little enormous country with lots of assets, and we have to become masters of working at all scales, big, small, and everything in between. And what we have to focus on is proper development. I was excited to see Stiglitz has a book, not that it’s on development, but I think he gives us something, and this new book will help us steer. And the last thing I will say is about, you know, we’re constantly tangled up thinking about productivity and wringing our hands about that, and a fellow named Kevin Yin had a good column in The Globe, and he said productivity comes from two places, new ideas or reallocating resources, and reallocating resources in ways that drives business. That’s what we have to do, but let’s never forget – it matters who owns what.

Bruce Katz Yeah.

Mary W Rowe Richard, 30 seconds to you.

Richard Florida I mean, making better places. I think changing the vocabulary away from urban, suburban and rural divides. And, I just had a chat with The New York Times about Trump and housing, and one of the big reasons Trump drew Latino and black and working class voters in even greater numbers is because they found quality of life to be unaffordable and unattainable. We all want to live in a great place. I think you’re on it, Mary, and you lead us where we need to go, and we’ll help you get there. But making an agenda about making great places where people can live and raise families and have opportunity, I think that’s the agenda for the future. We just have to press on.

Mary W Rowe We just have to press on. Thank you for joining us. On Wednesday, we do another CityTalk on How Do We Make Better Places? It’s going to be about investing in infrastructure. The School of Cities, where Richard is affiliated, did a call, a research call across the country and had people submit a bunch of essays and we’re going to talk about that, about this extraordinary infrastructure deficit. How are we going to deal with it? How are we going to make better places? Bruce, thank you for joining us. Jacquie, always great to see you. Zita, always fabulous to see you. Lots of coherence. And Richard, thank you for joining us. I know that you all have other commitments, so thanks for squeezing this in at short notice. Come to the Summit in a couple of weeks, folks, if you want to come to Ottawa, it’s an important conversation. We’re at a moment, how are we going to make better places? Wendy, play this lovely promo video so people can see it. And thanks for joining us gang …

Promo Video Hi, it’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute. I’m inviting you to come and be in Ottawa with us December 5/6 to talk about what’s happening in Canadian cities and communities across the country. This year we’re focusing on infrastructure. We have communities and cities and metropolitan regions across the country that are aging, and we can see it – just open your eyes and look all around you. Infrastructure is everywhere. So, we all know that we’ve got to be focusing for the future and thinking about – are we preparing our communities to be more resilient economically, in terms of climate, geopolitical changes? All of those kinds of things can be addressed through infrastructure, and we’ve got to figure out who’s going to pay for it, how do we design it? That includes housing, it includes all the questions that we’re preoccupied with at the Urban Institute, and that you are in your work, and we’re in this together. So, we need to learn from each other. So, I hope you’ll come and be part of the 2nd annual Summit on Canada’s Cities, December 5th and 6th in Ottawa.