Keynote speech - Prof Alan Gilbert - School of Environment and ...

Eco Cities Launch 23 rd July 2009
Keynote speech
Professor Alan Gilbert, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Manchester
Sir Richard Leese, Dr. Michael Oglesby, Professor Guy, distinguished guests, colleagues and friends…
Welcome to the Launch of this Manchester Eco Cities initiative, which has been developed and supported
by the Manchester City Council, the University of Manchester, Bruntwood and the Oglesby Charitable
Trust.
The formal element of the Launch will involve the witnessing by Michael Oglesby of the signing of a
Memorandum of Understanding between the City and the University.
Before we come to that, there are a few speeches, each designed to place the Eco Cities initiative in broader
context.
To begin that task, let me emphasise the sheer importance of the issues we are tackling in this partnership.
Many of you remember Thomas L. Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, which was the best-selling work of
non-fiction in the world in 2005. In it, Friedman tells of the moment of epiphany in February 2004 at the
end of a fortnight’s visit to Bangalore, when the idea first struck him that the emergence of a global
knowledge economy was creating a “flat world” – a world in which it was possible “for more people than
ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from
more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of
the world – using computers, e-mail, fibre-optic networks teleconferencing, and dynamic new software.”
The metaphor of the global knowledge economy as an increasingly frenetic level playing field, global in
scale, became for a short time the dominant metaphor in discussions about globalisation. Business leaders
from Davos to San Diego, Shanghai to Sao Paulo, could hardly have a conversation about contemporary
competitive realities without confident references to how flat the world of global business was becoming.
The trouble with Friedman’s metaphor is that the world of globalisation is not just not very flat, it is
arrestingly spiky. Whether in Silicon Valley, San Diego, Houston or Boston’s Route 128; or in Shanghai, the
Shenzhen Special Economic Region or other comparable enterprise centres within the People’s Republic of
China; or in Singapore, Bangalore or the financial districts of New York or London, it will be these
conspicuous clusters, rather than the flat landscape around them, that will be the key drivers of innovation,
wealth creation and enduring competitive advantage in the 21 st century knowledge economy. The rest of
the economy will indeed be relatively flat, but not in the sense that Friedman intended.
One thing that these spikes of wealth creation will have in common, according to Richard Florida, a leading
authority on globalisation, will be “clusters of excellence that have world class universities at their core.” I’ll
return to that observation shortly. First, I should perhaps note that in early 2008, Florida identified
Manchester as one of the cities around the world with the genuine potential to become a major city region
in the global knowledge economy, able to build enduring competitive advantages on an international scale.
It was in 2008, he calculated, the 28 th most significant spike globally, and in the UK second only to London.
So it is very much in the interests of Manchester (as of the UK more generally) that we learn more about
what it will take for a city like ours to grow in stature as a globally significant player in the spiky economic
landscape of the 21 st Century.

One thing we know, for certain, is that the global economy is already well on the way to becoming a
“knowledge economy”, dependent on a reliable flow of world class knowledge workers, innovative ideas
and ipso facto, knowledge institutions such as universities. Hence Richard Florida’s observation that,
among the defining characteristics of all the globally significant economic spikes, will be the presence of a
great university – or a number of great universities.
That truth is important in the context of today’s Launch of the Eco Cities initiative, but so (even more) is
another prerequisite of city region success. Great global cities henceforth will have no option whatsoever but
to be environmentally responsible and sustainable. They will have to be Eco Cities – clean, green and
sustainable – or they will be uncompetitive.
Cities ignoring the imperative of sustainability will not only be regulated out of competitive existence by
national Governments enforcing international protocols, but the world class knowledge workers and
creative classes with global choices will simply refuse to live in them.
But knowing how vital it is, on the one hand, and, on the other, actually achieving the reality of
environmental sustainability within our own City, are (unfortunately) two vastly different things.
Recognising that truth is easy; but the deep understanding and sheer hard work necessary to create “Eco
City Manchester” is going to be hard. The targets will be demanding and competition from other cities
around the world will be intense.
That is why today’s Launch is important. It is both the Launch of a practical initiative and the affirmation of
a binding commitment by the various parties to take the challenging “Eco City Manchester” agenda with
uncompromising seriousness. For the stakes are astronomical. We will either succeed in making
Manchester an ecologically sustainable city, or Manchester’s hopes of playing a major national and global
role in the decades ahead will falter. That gives today’s Launch enormous symbolic and practical
significance.
The University of Manchester is determined to be a reliable partner in the initiative. It is a characteristic of
the University, clearly set out in Towards Manchester 2015, our Strategic Plan, that when we commit
ourselves to a strategic research agenda we make two promises, one to ourselves, the other to our
partners. First, having identified a research agenda as one of our key priorities, we are committed to
operating on a scale and at a level of research quality that make us a globally significant player in that area
of research. We don’t just want to undertake world class research, we want to be world leading in the sense
of genuinely shaping the direction of the research agenda internationally. Secondly, we are determined not
to be a so-called “ivory tower”, little concerned about the practical application of the discoveries we make
or the knowledge we accumulate. For Manchester, university-based research is a practical endeavour. We
want our biological and medical research to lead to better drugs, more effective disease prevention and
enhanced patient care; we want the work of our Business School to lead to improved business practices and
more sustainable wealth creation; we want our social scientists to contribute to better public policy
outcomes; we hope that the research endeavours in our humanities schools will enrich the wider culture; we
want our physical scientists and research engineers to combine basic discovery with the development of
new technologies and innovative ideas of practical value in making UK industry more competitive. In short,
we want to undertake research that helps develop practical solutions to major human problems and
challenges.
Our commitment to what we call our ”Sustainable Societies” research programme involves precisely the
same preoccupation with making a difference for good. Sustainable Societies is also one of the small
number of research foci in relation to which Manchester has the potential to be a world leader. Already, the
University has a number of important existing initiatives linked in one way or another to the sustainability
of cities.

For while the Manchester Architecture Research Centre and the Centre for Urban Regional Ecology are
together taking the lead in establishing the “Eco Cities” initiative, the initiative will also be able to take
advantage of the formidable research strengths of the University in energy sustainability (through the
Manchester Energy Initiative in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences), environmental
sustainability (through the Tyndall Centre), global poverty remediation (through the Brooks World Poverty
Institute), sustainable consumption (through the Sustainable Consumption Institute), and social cohesion
(through the Harvard-Manchester Institute for Social Change). In all these areas, the University is a
recognised player in strong international research partnerships, linking us particularly to research being
undertaken in the US, Singapore, Japan and Bangladesh.
Having all that highly relevant background intellectual property to draw on leaves the University wellpositioned
to establish a world leading reputation in the “”Eco Cities” area.
Just as importantly, the initiative extends beyond the University as through strong working relationships in
Manchester and throughout the Northwest. We are particularly grateful to Bruntwood and to The Oglesby
Charitable Trust, whose generous funding has made the initiative possible. Bruntwood have been closely
involved in the development from day one, and our partnership with them has been of crucial importance in
driving the initiative forward.
This relationship with Bruntwood is, I believe, an excellent model of how universities need to operate, not
independently and in isolation, but through practical, strategic alliances with corporate and public sector
partners with whom they share a common purpose.
Michael Oglesby has been a long-term friend of the University, and a wonderful advocate of its interests.
As Chair of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, he has shown tremendous commitment to our
ambitious plans in cancer research, and has been a central member of our Global Leadership Board since its
inception last year. We are delighted, Michael, that this “Eco Cities” initiative represents a further
deepening of what is already tremendously important relationship.
Our early discussions with Michael Oglesby and Bruntwood ran in parallel with important discussions with
the City Council, with whom we have in any case been working on environmental issues for many years.
Much practical benefit has already emerged from this long-term pattern of working together. For the sake
of time, I will identify a single example - the “I-trees” programme, through which, in partnership with the
City, we and our partners in “The Corridor, Manchester” are looking at the specific impact of tree cover in
Manchester both in terms of reducing temperatures, absorbing CO2 and helping to prevent flooding.
Against that background of collaboration, it is fitting that our commitment to working in partnership with
the City is going to be sealed today through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the
two organisations that is focused on the truly monumental challenges of making Manchester a world
competitive “Eco City”.
To summarise the meaning of the signing from the University’s perspective, let me conclude by saying that
today’s launch symbolises the kind of University Manchester seeks to be in the 21 st century – committed to
working in partnership with others to put our expertise to work in tackling some of the gravest threats
facing mankind over the coming decades. This initiative can make a transformational contribution to the
Manchester city region and far beyond.
That is why I am delighted to be able to participate at the Launch of this highly strategic new partnership.
Professor Alan Gilbert
23 rd July 2009