‘A city achieves purpose by being authentic to its people, its place, and its time’

Aaron Hurst.

A City for a New Generation

Remarkable Cities Masterclass 2014, Pembroke College, Cambridge University.

Spending the weekend at the Remarkable Cities Masterclass with Beyond Green and approximately 20 people from a cross range of sectors. They included social innovators, urban planners, transport planners and young entrepreneurs I have spent the week thinking about what do cities mean to me, what is the context – is it that its just about loving where I grew and a utopian view of wanting to make it ‘a better place to live’, that drives me or is there something deeper?

My big local cities including London and Birmingham served a purpose when I was growing up, a place to go and access the big large readily available services my family required, London provided a shiny place that one day when we had made it thats where the dream job would lie. We moved from inner city Birmingham where housing was significantly cheaper to the leafy suburb when my first generation Indian immigrant parents had earned enough to move our family nearer to a safer neighbourhood and better schooling. It was a story that I saw repeated numerous times throughout our family and was a fairly generic aspiration that I became accustomed and conditioned to as I grew up.

So I studied and I studied hard, but then things changed. Or well, they didn’t turn out how I expected. The big shiny institutions didn’t quite turn out to be the dream world that I had imagined, they became part of a broken system that I become increasingly irritated with, rather than seeing them as a key ingredient of the ecosystem that would with wider change, transform the future. I began to demonise their very existence. So, it was time to leave. I thought I was alone in the dissatisfaction. Turns out things were changing, I just wasn’t wholly aware that I was part of this huge time of upheaval. Not only are things changing with a generation of change makers not willing to accept the status quo, but more fundamentally everyday reality is changing for the many.

I think Yvonne Roberts in her most recent Guardian piece sums this up rather well ‘Employment continues to rise, whilst unemployment feel to 6.4% last month, the lowest since 2008. Part of the story of the growth in the employment is that 40% of the jobs created since 2010 are the result of a shift towards self employment capital of Western Europe’. The self employed world of start ups, inventions, innovation certainly makes this look like a glamorous world that we should throw all our dissatisfactory jobs away for and go pursue ‘what we love’. For many, this is the dream, the intense struggle is worth it — working on what makes us come alive. However, self employment isn’t always a choice either. Whilst entrepreneurship sits at heart of a thriving economy, a recent report by the Resolution Foundation highlights that many who became self employed in the last 5 years would rather work for someone, and often their situation is involuntary. Talking from personal experience, I can say whilst I relish the autonomy — the risk and insecurity act more as a source of constant background anxiety rather than liberation.

Yvonne continues in her article that ‘the lack of money in the pockets of the many, who spend proportionately that than the wealthy — has led many experts to cite it as a fundamental crisis in capitalism. As employers use ever more aggressive tactics to reduce labour costs and restrict collective action, productivity is suffering and patterns of employment initially viewed as temporary are becoming permanent’ and as we all know, this is not unique to the UK, the gap between the richest and the rest widens. I initially thought this was situation very far away from me, but founding my own venture begins to bring the reality home, growing a team that is earning where it can to build a dream, means the responsibility of this very close to home too. Here I find that very reality, young people, driven to build a better world, fed up but not broken by the systems that fundamentally don’t work democratically and for whom work is insecure, without security, without holiday or sick pay, limited hours and finances are often a source of real anxiety.

So it’s beginning to sound like a sob story. That isn’t the purpose, for me its a real reflection of where we are in the midst of this Gen Y, Millennial, Baby Boom generation where things are very different than what we were all prepared for — and we are needing to adjust emergently — and this means there are some real growing pains. So it leads me to two real questions about my involvement in Remarkable Cities — what does this even have to do with cities? What are some of the pressing issues and questions that the masterclass raised for me, and what does Impact Hub Birmingham have to do with any of this?

We are seeing this generation described above moving to cities for the opportunities they afford for employment, active lifestyles, sustainable living, a sense of community and meaning. A new generation of workers, consumers and citizens are increasingly looking for experience that connect them to a greater purpose, social impact and often like minded communities. In an increasingly digitally connected world, it appears that the need for physical proximity is greater than ever, and often less easily found. Figures around loneliness and mental health struggles span the age ranges and it feels like we are sitting on a time bomb.

Many companies too are moving beyond CSR policies and towards a fundamental shift of rethinking and repurposing their place in the world. It is no longer about profit at all cost, but instead emphasising growth which is sustainable, socially good, environmentally responsible and purpose driven. Joanne Yarrow spoke at the Masterclass about IKEA’s global strategy to move away from ‘stuff’, that which upon their entire revenue model has exploded — towards more outcomes, and less selling of ‘stuff’. She continued that they wanted to go further — moving towards a net positive environmental policy, rather than trying a little harder — ‘doing less bad’. Whilst they maybe early on in this level of strategy, rethinking their business model entirely at a time of incredible growth, it demonstrates the fundamental shift. We already begin to think beyond social enterprise, towards open, social, good business. Open venturing pioneer Indy Johar talks about this more here.

It raises a few prominent questions for me in response to the Remarkable Cities Masterclass. Cities need to prepare for this radical change in working and living priorities for future generations, who are entering a new reality one where the problems are massive, and the need for change is urgent. How can cities prepare for this radical change amongst their citizens, organisations and companies. How can cities enable their citizens to thrive, have purpose, meaning and to actively collaborate to build places they want to be?

Aaron Hurst (The Purpose Economy, 2014): asks ‘How can we turn our cities into Hubs of purpose’? He outlines a blurry vision that has some key indicators currently emerging:

THE PURPOSEFUL CITY WORKS AT ITS PURPOSE. THE CITIZEN OF A PURPOSEFUL CITY IS ACTIVELY ENGAGED. A CITY ACHIEVES PURPOSE BY:

Being authentic to its people, its place, and its time

Measuring success in human terms, not purely economic ones

Providing an educational system that nurtures the whole child, teaches purposeful citizenship, and graduates purpose-driven citizens from its schools

Providing opportunities for meaningful interaction — in parks, schools, buildings and streets

Accepting “blur” as a zoning principle and encouraging public/private partnerships

Embracing urban design that encourages healthy lifestyles

Providing inclusive, affordable housing

I think it is a particularly interesting to start to thinking about cities as a whole can reimagine themselves to actively contribute to the emerging realities and huge problems our population is facing from young to old — rather than simple save the sinking ship. Much of this quite fundamentally with putting people / citizens at the heart of the change, Civic Systems Lab is a living laboratory looking at a whole systems approach to a participatory and open society http://www.civicsystemslab.org, a look into the diversity of the live prototypes currently in progress across the UK test the conditions, tools and platforms needed to support civic change.

Founding Impact Hub Birmingham continues to evolve and emerge as platform that we believe will play a key role in the future of Birmingham as a more open, equitable and democratic city. We need to understand the changing dynamic of work, the pressing reality that are faced by not only the most needy, but a younger generation struggling to exist in the new reality that many have not been prepared for through the traditional education systems but who have big dreams for their futures. In addition we must think about what is really required to support early stage entrepreneurs, as a founding team who have been working tirelessly for over a year on this project unpaid, we realise that current systems are enough to break you and your spirit. Funding is not as readily available as Twitter may tell you, its not all fancy coffee and MacBooks whilst plotting the next major disruptive innovation, power structures remain and stifle progress and quite simply when envisioning your utopian vision for the future, no one really is able to tell how ridiculously tough it is. Even if they tell you, its too late before you realise. We all know the lofty quotes that nothing worth building was ever easy, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take our responsibilities towards supporting young innovators, early stage entrepreneurs and citizens who want to transform their cities very seriously. Every generation doesn’t have to keep going through the same challenges.

A few weeks back someone asked ‘well so I guess the Hub is basically a co working space for social enterprises, do you think you can keep a space going with just the social stuff?’ This made me think more deeply about what we were, co working is an element, we know the future of work and offices mean that people will work more remotely, will need more flexibility and will need spaces that help collaboration to flourish, we know that a like minded but diverse community is the way many are testing and growing innovative practices and we also know that much of future of business will need to be inherently open and social. However, there is so much more that this space needs to be about. So, really what is Impact Hub Birmingham? It is a platform, a live prototype to test what are the key ingredients to grow socially innovative ecosystems that can foster good business, that can find new ways to collaborate, that are able to be an engine for local system change — responding powerfully to the cities biggest challenges whilst providing a space that enables the new reality. A space that is able to create, attract and grow the conditions for healthy democratic ecosystems of the future and fundamentally create a platform that acts as a launchpad for all to build what could be called a ‘remarkable city’, one that is open, fair, democratic and a home for the 21st century.

The challenges ahead are huge for the Impact Hub Birmingham team designing, attracting and curating open access opportunities, programmes, resources, events, spaces, scholarships that are accessible to passionate innovators from all backgrounds at the heart of the what we need to design in our first year.

A platform that provides access to a wide range of tools that citizens, entrepreneurs & businesses need to thrive and evolve. But a platform that also looks at the very human reality of this from the challenges of the self employed, the emerging youthful population to why it is so incredible tough to be an early stage entrepreneur and how can we take a whole systems approach to our mega challenges. How does Impact Hub Birmingham create such a platform. I know it involves much more than us as a founding team — does it involve you? Get in touch!

I think some of the things I’ve talked about here play some part of the heart what was being explored as a remarkable city of the future at the Beyond Green Masterclass, but really what the weekend highlight is the immense need there is to come together and start to build, test and grow the platforms of the future. Lets not just wait for mega regeneration projects to build the cities of the future, lets repurpose from within with citizens at the heart of the narrative and work with those building the mega infrastructure of what is a remarkable city of the future.

I know no one school of thought will help us through huge challenges cities need to address however, I am pretty sure that we need world class leadership that has the vision to think radically but act with integrity. I am not sure we can create remarkable cities without removing the red tape, and empowering and equipping its citizens, young people, entrepreneurs and radical dreamers with the opportunities, possibilities, tools and autonomy to transform it.

If you got to the end, thanks for indulging my brain dump.

Want to help build Impact Hub Birmingham? Investors / Partners / Wicked radical dudes very much wanted.

Get in touch — immy.kaur@hubbirmingham.net

References

The Need for a New Type of Venturing: https://medium.com/@indy_johar/the-need-for-a-new-type-of-venturing-a6512d7199c4

Our Small World Future: https://medium.com/@indy_johar/our-small-world-future-19b3d340b676

The Future of the City, Indy Johar: https://medium.com/@indy_johar/the-need-for-a-new-type-of-venturing-a6512d7199c4

Collective Agency, Design and Impact for Systems Change: http://www.futureshift.cc/cfblog/2014/5/30/colllective-agency-design-and-impact-for-systems-change

Roberts, Yvonne (2014). ‘Low Paid Britain: People have had enough. It’s soul destroying’ — The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/30/low-pay-workers-one-in-three

Photo Credit: Verity Milligan