The Model City of the 21st Century
Yesterday I attended a thought provoking conference sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and Tulane University – New Orleans as the Model City for the 21st Century: New Concepts of Urban Innovation. Amy Liu, Deputy Director of the Brookings Institution, made a keynote presentation.
She identified three factors essential for model cities in the modern era. The first is prosperity, manifested in a variety of measures including productivity, inclusiveness, and environmental sustainability. Second is resilience, or the ability to bounce back from adversity. A city must shore up the factors that let you bounce – innovation, human capacity, infrastructure, and amenities that lead to a desirable quality of life. Underlying all of these is good governance. The third essential ingredient is the ability to move to the next economy. The future economy will entail a new growth model, as it is becoming increasingly apparent that the force that brought us out of previous economic slumps – domestic consumption – will not be our answer this time.
Two key sectors were identified. We must tap into consumer demand outside of the United States, rebalancing the economy to be more export oriented and less consumptive. Exports represent a tremendous opportunity for small and medium size businesses, which now represent only a tiny percentage of our international trade. Moreover, jobs in logistics and trade are high paying in relation to many other industries. Secondly, we must move toward a low carbon economy, taking advantage of changes already underway in the energy sector. The demand for green products and a sustainable environment can generate activity in many areas – finance, higher education, science/engineering, and entrepreneurship.
New Orleans has strategic strengths to build upon, and a post Katrina spirit to make us a model city.