The Conferencegoer

Recently I was invited to a swish conference on cities here in New York, and since it was a very nice invitation for a guy like me, off I went. Though big names in the field were there, I generally find the purpose of conferences often somewhat disappointing. Presenters generally promote themselves, and the hurried conversations at the coffee breaks are what I imagine speed dating feels like.

Also, I have a love-hate relationship with my career studying cities. On one hand, this blog and my other blogs exist because I'm interested generally in cities and city life, but on the other hand, this blog also also exists because I find the state of thinking in the field often disappointing. Despite a lot of writing in fields ranging from architecture to economics, there seems to be a general lack of creativity, vitality and rigorous thinking in the scholarship addressing cities.

(O Reader, I hope you feel similarly rather than offended, unless you're one of the people I am now going to go on and offend).

Let me illustrate my point with an anecdote. The afternoon began with a hot young architect giving a slick presentation on the quality of spaces inside terminals and airports. The pictures are nice, but like most architects, he crafted an entire presentation about his own buildings, showing them as the inevitable outcome of trends in modern society. Oh please.

Even more deadly dull, however, are the public advocates all sitting in a row, a long line of New York grandees who basically form the city's urban planning establishment, droning on at length about the same projects that they have been talking about for the past twenty years. I'm not kidding. All of these advocates claim that despite the public's natural and overwhelming support, they haven't been able to find the minimum $20 billion they need to be able to do anything at all. There is a lot of murmuring and rueful commenting on the collective inadequacies of the public, politicians, and the federal government.

Then, something amazing happened, in that common sense asserted itself. Someone in the back row stood up, identified himself as a consultant in developing countries, and he said to all of these collective wise men (and one woman) that

"the amounts of money that you are talking about are obscene.  The cities I work in have a fraction of the money that you're talking about, and still accomplish more with guts, creativity and ingenuity".

This gets a sustained round of almost delirious applause, if only because it suddenly seems obvious to talk perhaps about why if you fail for the first twenty years, one might try a different tack. Then, the mayor of Bogota, Columbia says to the assembled New York grandees,

"I would like to videotape this proceeding, and all of the things that you have just said, and show it throughout the Third World.  When people hear the amounts of money that you are talking about, they would not know whether to laugh or cry, but it would be entertaining".

Or something along these lines.  Turning to the young architect, he says, "To me, the point of transportation planning is not to get people to spend more time in airports and terminals.  All of the places that you show, they seem unpleasant.  I hate being in airports".  This gets another round of sustained laughter and terrific applause.

Without being too cinematic about it, the most amazing thing then to happen was that the sun really started shining into this conference room, and onto the heads of the dumbfounded New York planning community.  The symbolism was much too obvious, but it was a really, really great moment.