Urban Land Institute 2009 Fall Meeting in San Francisco
"Global Power City Index: Ideas for Attracting Business and Investments to Cities"

The Mori Memorial Foundation’s Institute for Urban Strategies presented the results of its research for the Global Power City Index (GPCI) at the annual meeting of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a US real estate development research organization. This year’s annual gathering was held at the Moscone Center convention complex in San Francisco and more than 6,000 participants from across the US and overseas attended. The presentation, which included the opinions of urban development and architectural design experts, offered views on how to practically apply the Mori Memorial Foundation’s Institute for Urban Strategies’ research to business and real estate development. The GPCI Group was organized as a multinational team comprised of members from Japan, the US, and Korea, and the presentation took place during one of the convention’s concurrent sessions.

Date and Time

November 5, 2009 12:15 - 13:00

Venue

Esplanade 300, Moscone Center South, San Francisco, USA

Title

Global Power City Index: Ideas for Attracting Business and Investments to Cities

Presenters

Hiroo Ichikawa
(Dean, Professional Graduate School, Meiji University / Director, the Mori Memorial Foundation)
Richard Bender
(Professor Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley)
Sina Kim
(Researcher, Mitsubishi Research Institute)
David Malott
(Senior Associate Principal, Kohn Pederson Fox Associates)
Hiroo Mori
(Senior Managing Director, Mori Building Co., Ltd.)
Takayuki Kubo / Moderator
(Researcher, Institute for Urban Strategies, the Mori Memorial Foundation)

Downtown San Francisco

Moscone Center

Urban Land Expo at Moscone Center

The presentation began with moderator Takayuki Kubo, researcher at the Institute for Urban Strategies, greeting the assembled guests and introducing the group’s members. Mr. Kubo then carried on with an explanation about the presentation’s objective and a summary of the research. He was followed by Professor Hiroo Ichikawa, one of the foundation’s directors, who went on to present the GPCI findings. To start, Professor Ichikawa gave an explanation about the structure and the 69 indicators used by the GPCI, before going on to reveal this year’s most recent comprehensive power ranking along with separate rankings according to function and actor. Strong attention has been gathered from the participants when it was announced that US cities, including San Francisco, generally placed in the lower end of the rankings for “Environment”, a functional category that was newly created for this year’s GPCI. Following Prof. Ichikawa, researcher Sina Kim gave the results of an analysis of the “Global Circuit” (dependency relations among the 35 cities subject to the rankings), a new research item added this year. The results showed that New York, London and Tokyo continued to have strong global financial corporate networks and also revealed that Paris is a hidden financial center.

GPCI group members	Auditorium before the presentation
Title slide for the GPCI presentation	Comprehensive ranking for GPCI 2009

With the assembled audience having gained a heightened overall understanding of the GPCI research results, Mr. Hiroo Mori, senior managing director of Mori Building Co., Ltd., gave a presentation titled “Creating Global Magnets.” The GPCI defines the “comprehensive power of cities” as being the abilility to attract more creative and alluring people and companies from around the world amidst inter-city competitiveness unfolding on a global scale. In response to this definition Mr. Mori discussed the importance of “global magnets” while introducing the audience to projects such as Roppongi Hills and the Shanghai World Financial Center which adhere to the “Vertical Garden City” development philosophy of Mori Building. Additionally, Mr. Mori received a positive reaction from the session participants when, as an example of learning from the GPCI, he told them about the helicopter service the company had started in September of this year. This service was started in direct response to index results which highlighted one of Tokyo’s weaknesses as being accessibility between the city center and Narita Airport.

Presentation of the group

Slide on the helicopter service

Continuing on from Mr. Mori, David Malott, Senior Associate Principal of Kohn Pederson Fox Associates (KPF), design architect for the Shanghai World Financial Center, spoke on the theme of “Macro Design Factors.” Using Roppongi Hills, the Shanghai World Financial Center, and the Hong Kong International Commerce Center as examples or urban building complexes in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, Mr. Malott gave an analysis according to actor (manager, artist, resident, etc) that each facility played in raising its respective cities’ allure and attractiveness.

The presentation concluded with a talk by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emeritus Richard Bender titled “The Optical Illusion”. As a GPCI steering committee member, Professor Bender disserted that the purpose of the Global Power City Index is not simply to annually announce a ranking of global cities. Rather, he said that while identifying each city’s respective strengths and weaknesses, the index should serve as a catalyst to engage people in considering ways in which cities should be developed going forward. Alluding to the fact that changing your visual perception of an object allows you to see it in a totally different way, Professor Bender lectured that by also looking at cities in a different light and clarifying components that should be developed, it’s possible to radically alter one’s current perspective.

Slide on the Macro Design Factor

Roppongi Hills is one of the Global Magnets

A question and answer session with audience members occurred after the conclusion of the presentation and a variety of questions were fielded from the assembled guests. These included ones concerning issues such as real estate investment should Haneda Airport become a hub, and the causes for the low score in the index received by San Francisco, which at first glance appears to be a comfortable place to live. Enthusiastic discussions took place right up until the end of the session’s allotted time. The presentation team continued to answer individual questions from a large number of audience members after the end of the session, and it was evident that interest in the GPCI had been raised. The fact that the unique mix of nationalities and varied backgrounds of the presentation team became a topic of interest can be considered one of the reasons increased attention was given to the GPCI at the session this time. Next year’s annual convention of the ULI is schedule to take place in Washington DC and we are looking forward to making a presentation that will also include the analysis of new cities.

Related Websites

ULI 2009 San Francisco Meeting Website

Overseas Websites introducing GPCI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_mondiale
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltstadt