 Good afternoon, guests. Welcome. Welcome to our session, and it will be a very lively discussion with our three guests today. Our official title for this discussion is called Local Solutions for Global Challenges, and the way I interpret that is what keeps a mayor busy. And we're very fortunate to have a three very distinguished speaker and very lively conference session list as well. Starting from the lady on my left-hand side, Ms. Kathy Bergs, governor of the province of Antwerp, and Mr. Nahid Nenshi, the mayor of Calgary, and also, last but not least, Mr. Andy Burham, mayor of Greater Manchester. So, let's start. We're also traveling in tension. Let's start bringing us to a typical day of a mayor, even though you're traveling. What are your priorities? What keeps you up when you wake up of the day? What are the things you are about most? Probably start from Governor Bergs. Okay. Good afternoon. The things I work most on is emergency planning. So, governors are responsible for anything that has to do with emergency planning, exercises, and also we have to coordinate the civil services when there is an emergency. Antwerp is the home of the second largest port in Europe and the second largest petrochemical cluster in the world. So, many companies, enterprises with hazardous materials. So, we work closely on that and also on terrorist attacks. So, we had some attacks in Brussels. Second thing, and that's maybe closer to the issue of today, is I really want an energy independent antwerp. That means that we should produce as much renewable energy as the demand of energy is big, which is quite a challenge because we have such a large amount of enterprise. So, I work really on a daily base on renewables. We have a very dense population, a very dense region. That means when we want to have a realization of a project on wind turbines and so on, it takes quite a while and governors are supposed to coordinate and to make sure that every parties think on the same way to really realize new wind turbine projects, solar, hydrogen projects, geothermic projects, heat networks and so on. And the last one, which is very personal, is also zero casualties in and through traffic. Belgium is a place where many people, young people, die in traffic. So, we want a traffic which is safe and secure, mainly also with IOT, other solutions. ESA in cars, that means smart systems in cars that should be introduced in cars. They will not be able to allow to come on the market without being provided with systems that you just slow down when you see somebody on the street and so on. So, that are really the main topics. A wide spectrum of very important issues. Yeah. Mayor Nancy, how about you? Well, so to give you a little bit of background, I'm the mayor of a city of about one and a half million people, third largest city in Canada. This summer we were named by the economists the best city in North America in which to live the fourth best in the world. I don't say that to brag. I say that to say that even in a situation where a city is well developed and runs reasonably well, we nonetheless have challenges every day. You know, our job is to make sure that our citizens stay healthy and alive and safe and happy and that we improve their quality of life every day. So I always say to my 20,000 colleagues at the city of Calgary, our simple job is to make life better every day. What we have to do is make life better. So what that means fundamentally is for us is probably what it is for every single city. Priorities that we are focused on are a prosperous city. A city where there is economic opportunity for all, where we are fighting poverty on a daily basis. You know, a healthy and green city. A city where people have many opportunities for recreation to live a healthy life and we are also at the forefront as all cities are of environmental sustainability. A city that moves, mobility is important for every single one of us making sure that people can get to where they need to go through a variety of different mechanisms. Whether it's biking, walking, public transit or driving their own vehicle and goods can move as well. We talk about a city of safe and inspiring neighborhoods. Our primary job is to keep people safe to make sure that they can live comfortably in their neighborhood. But build space is also important. How we plan a city, how we bring neighborhoods together, how we build an environment, a physical environment that really allows for overall sustainability. And then probably what keeps us all up at night because we have to also run the organization is has to be a well run city. We have to have a city that is efficient, a city that makes good use of taxpayer dollars. And those are the things that we really focus in on. And you know, we can, we have 45 minutes so we can go into any one of those about this much. But broadly, as I've said many times, what we increasingly know is that this is the first time in human history where the majority of humanity lives in cities and urbanization will only increase. So urban issues are human issues. And when we solve things at the local level, we solve them for humanity. And that means, you know, I get to wake up every morning and be real happy about my job. And I hope these folks do too. How about you, Mary? Yeah, me the same. I mean, I was a member of parliament in the UK for 16 years. I was a minister in the Blair government, the Brown government. But would I rather be back doing all of that or would I rather be a mayor? I would much rather be a mayor because I think national politics is having a turbulent time for a reason. It's out of touch. It hasn't moved quickly enough. And as a mayor, you can you can deal with things in a much more direct way. And it's more rewarding. Actually, if you're in politics to make a difference, as most of us are, I think you can make it more of a difference in a mayoral position than you can in a parliamentary position. To answer your question, what occupies my day? Well, Twitter kind of sets the tone. I'm afraid. I don't know whether you're reading it. Yeah, well, yeah, maybe to be in China where there's no Twitter. Yeah, brilliant. It's a Twitter holiday. It's fantastic. But go on my timeline in the morning. If it's of interest to anybody in the you'll see what what happens. It's one long set of here's the picture of my train carriage. This is this is my boss. I'm on a I get everybody's commute sent to me on Twitter via running commentary. And that's the interesting because I'm the first elected mayor of Great Manchester. So go back two years. The public didn't have one person to complain to whereas they do now and they're using it. I can assure you transport, you know, that's the single biggest issue. We don't have a good enough transport system. Second issue would be housing and particularly the most urgent expression of problems of housing, which is homelessness. If you look on my Twitter timeline, you'll see what are you doing? There's too many rough sleepers. We want people in Manchester want something done about those issues. And then thirdly policing crime. So but all of those things are events and you can't just let events shape you. You also don't have to say, well, yes, I'll deal with the events and your concerns. But here's my program and here's the things I'm trying to do. So I'm trying to drive through, you know, as well as dealing with people's concerns on transport and all those other things. I'm trying to develop an agenda around rough sleeping. I want to eradicate it. I'm donating 15% of my mayoral salary to the mayor's homelessness fund. And I'm saying to everybody in Greater Manchester, donate, you know, this is all of us. This is a shared. So we're trying to build a movement to eradicate rough sleeping in Manchester. I'm saying that young people need to be our priority and I'm developing policies around young people's travel and skills and anyway, I could go into other things. So I just think it's a mixture of dealing with the daily events and all mayors will get hit by those and the issues around crime and terrorism and, you know, these things we have to plan for, but actually also having space to put your own personal program forward and try and drive that through and it's a balance between those two things. It's real power and real job. Let's put, we touch a lot of issues already. We'll elaborate on that, but let's put that in context first. Could you share with me in nutshell your city and your province? What is the GDP per capita? What's the unemployment rate? What's the use in terms of the proportion of the labor force and also what will be the leading industries so we can put all your priorities in the context. Please start with Gordon Berks again. So Antwerp, the province of Antwerp, how we say it's the most wealthy province of Belgium. So it's province of Belgium, one of the 10 provinces of Belgium is the biggest, is the largest, contributes most to the GDP and is the home, as I mentioned, of the port of Antwerp, second largest in Europe. The second largest petrochemical cluster in the world is the diamond trade center of the world. So it's quite renowned for that. And we have three actual regions. So that Antwerp city itself, which is the hub for the things I mentioned, but also life sciences, health and so on. Then we have the Kemper where we mainly also have a lot of pharmaceuticals and the South, Meghala, also a historical city, a lot of R&D centers and some big Japanese, Chinese and American companies. So it's quite, it's 1.8 million inhabitants, 17 municipalities, a very dense network because it's a logistic hub for Europe. Many, of course, goods products come from China and the US from Africa. They come to the port of Antwerp and then you have the hinterland connections by trade, but also a lot of trucks. That means that they have a huge problem of congestion and of mobility. The GDP is rather high. We have a young population, a low rate of unemployment. There's a big job creator, but we do have some unemployment and especially for people out of the migration. And also that is a main issue. So there's like 4% employment, unemployment for people born and raised in Belgium, so to say, but people out of the migration and we live with 117 nationalities living together in Antwerp. So you can meet the world in Antwerp. It's a very globalized city, but that means that's a major challenge to make sure that everybody is integrated and will contribute in a very positive way. Unfortunately, people might know that, but there's also a problem with cocaine coming to the port of Antwerp. So that is the very bad spots of the province, but instead of that the integration of refugees, people from all over the world, that's an issue. But we're doing quite well, but you have always challenges ahead and a lot of challenges. How about Calgary? So Calgary is not a port city, but it is in a different kind of way. So Calgary is located at the base of the Rocky Mountains, most beautiful terrain in the world if I say so myself, at the beginning of the Great Plains of North America. So we are in the middle of North America and we have about in the city proper about 1.3 million people. We're unique among many cities and the vast majority of the population is within the city. It is a tremendously prosperous place and always has been. Our GDP per capita is the highest in Canada. It continues to be the highest in Canada. It is the most educated place in Canada and as I mentioned, generally wins awards for its livability. However, things are not all that rosy and in we were badly hit by the commodity price declines in 2014, 2015 and the recession that continues in Calgary to this day. We went from the lowest unemployment rate in Canada for many, many years to the highest in 18 months. We went from 0% downtown vacancy in our central business district to almost 30% in 18 months. Those of you who want to relocate, great skilled labor, lots of good space in the central business district available today. So I love roller coasters, but this is too much of a roller coaster and building resilience into our economic system is a really important part of what we do. So Calgary is a very global city as all three cities here are. We have always been open and welcoming to immigrants and to refugees. We're particularly proud of our response to the Syrian refugee crisis in which we really affirmed that in a time where people seem to be gravitating towards closed borders and closed mines, we are defiantly open to the world. That's very important to us. But the energy sector oil and gas makes up about 30% of Calgary's GDP. When I graduated from university some 25 years ago, don't do the math. I was nine. Oil and gas was about 50% of Calgary's GDP. It's now after about a trillion dollars of investment in the oil sands and in the Albert Andrews sector, it's now down to 30%. So we have been diversifying without anyone knowing. We've always had the highest number of startups of any city in the country. The problem is that it's been very much focused on one sector. And so building that, even though we're hugely prosperous placed by global terms, we're not used to having this level of unemployment. We're not used to having this level of youth unemployment. And in particular, even when we were really rich, as with every city, poverty and homelessness remain problems. My big priority for the next three years is actually on mental health and addiction. The opioid crisis has hit us hard as it has hit most cities in North America. We lose more people to overdose in Calgary than we lose to car collisions and violent crime combined. And I think that cities around the world have not cracked that complex relationship between crime prevention, mental health, addiction, and indeed your work on homelessness. And so we're hoping to really help lead the world in a cross community collaborative effort over the next year to really seek brand new solutions to end the stigma around mental health, to assist people to maintain good mental health and to deal with addiction. Take us to a group, Manchester. Well, we're discussing the fourth industrial revolution of this incredible gathering, but actually Manchester was the home of the first industrial revolution. We were the cotton capital of the world. The mechanization of machinery and the mills was the start of the first industrial revolution. In many ways, you know, when you're the first, it kind of gives you the problem then of being stuck with the old technology. And Manchester, like many northern cities, English cities went into decline in the 1980s, 1970s, 80s are some of that old industry left. But we've been having a renaissance in the last 20 years. There are more, on GDP, there are more cranes, I'm told, on the Manchester skyline today than any other city in Europe. Manchester is being substantially rebuilt, as we speak. In terms of unemployment, it's about five to seven percent, depending on which part of Greater Manchester you're going. And here's the problem, I think. You know, we've had a kind of system that, in our country, has been very London centric, and policies have been made for one part of the country that weren't right for us, you know, in education, an obsession on the university route when actually more technical education was needed for many people, young people in Manchester. And I think here is where the roots of Brexit come. Because we've got an economy that's changing fast and diversifying, but then old outdated political systems that haven't kept pace with that and have left some places feeling powerless and not able to shape their future. And I also think that the European Union hasn't helped particularly industrial areas make the transition from the old industry to the new. The state aid rules are quite challenging if you're the steel industry or the mining industry. And if the light goes out in the furnace that the steel works, then it ain't coming back on again. I don't think Europe myself, although I remain, ever really has helped the former industrial areas. It's been good for the cities, but not so good for the areas around the cities. And Manchester, you know, we've suffered a little bit from that. So, you know, our challenge now is to obviously make sense of Brexit and in a new world kind of bring forward a new approach and our approach is more devolution to the city. You know, we have the biggest devolution deal of any city in England. We have devolved control over our health service which nowhere else has. That is the best answer, I think, in this kind of fast moving economy, put more power down at the city level. Let us decide our own future within national policy. And Manchester is at the forefront of that very exciting change. So, you know, it's an ongoing story, but the one thing I would just say very quickly is, you know, don't read, even though the majority of people voted Brexit in Greater Manchester, don't read xenophobia or racism into that. It is more a statement of dissatisfaction at the London-centric approach of life in our country, the unbalanced UK economy. And I think you need to just remember that in our cotton mills years ago, when the American Civil War was on and there was a blockade on cotton, the working people of Manchester voted that they would not handle slave-picked cotton and they helped end slavery. It's a long tradition of internationalism in Manchester. Even last year when we had the terrorist attack at our arena, the public didn't divide and become hateful and separated one from another. The city was strong, solidarity, unified response. So, Manchester is internationalist. It's strong, but it wants to control more of its own future and now we have the chance to do that. Thank you. Thank you for the very nuanced explanation and introduction to your cities and to your province that share with us the challenges and also share with us the legacies and also the opportunities. So, some of the problems like Mary Nanxi said, it's urbanization. It's basically urbanization. And one big urbanization problem Chinese cities are facing today is environment pollution and in a broader sense of that, China is leading the effort, increasingly leading the effort of climate change and your cities as well. So, how do you tackle the pollution problem during your stage of, various stage of development and also now leading the effort of climate change because that's a global issue. How do you bring that home to a city and make people be aware and contribute to the solution to that? Who want to take that first? Why don't I start? So, you know, we have an interesting place in Calgary because we are the major energy hub for the world in conventional energy. We are also very, very cognizant of our responsibility and the world's responsibility in managing climate change. And so, managing through that transition and doing so in a very pragmatic way is really where we come from. The nation, Canada, is doing this as well, but we really don't see the big argument between economy and environment. I'm not saying everyone has that consensus. Certainly there's a lot of difference of opinion on this. But we feel that that transition can be managed well. And in particular, there is no way the world can meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets without true action at the local level. You know, the city of Calgary, we met our Kyoto targets while Kyoto was still around. And other cities did the same. You know, we run our entire city operations, including public transit on renewable energy, for example. We're investigating solar and wind installations at people's homes within the work that we do. We just built a very large solar park and so on. In Calgary, you know, Calgary's an oil and gas center, but our green economy was responsible. I'm looking for the number here. $3.6 billion in gross output, nearly $2 billion in GDP, 615,000 jobs. And so there's a good, what I'm trying to say is there's a good economic reason for us to be tackling these things. But primarily, cities have to deal with mobility, which is air. It's about the air pollution and stewarding air as best we can. We have to deal with solid waste, which is about stewarding the land. We deal with parks and green space as well, trees. And I don't know about the two of you, but one of our primary responsibilities is ensuring all of our citizens have a gift that a billion people in the world don't have, which is safe, clean drinking water every day. So managing the air, the land and the water is what we do every single day. So first of all, I'm very happy that all the mayors of the province of Antwerp subscribed the convention of mayors. So they really commit to the sustainability goals and they are aware of the fact there are no deniers. So the climate distribution is the climate disturbance is big. It's not just a climate change, but it's climate disturbance and the effects on the weather extremes is also very big. So you have inundation, you have problems of drought, water shortage and so on. So it's very good and very nice that they are aware of that. It's also very good that they have after year, year after year, they have a conference to make sure that they look after the fact that it has an effect. So you have the monitoring of the effects of the measurements that are taken to make sure that they really obtain the goals. What I do organize is kind of a competition every time I put on a list. How many windmills do you have on your surface? How many solar panels? How many places where you can have electric vehicles to make sure that they really commit the goals that they are doing. Good thing is that they're now experiencing with less that are low emission zones to make sure that cars that are too polluting may not enter the city centers. No, they may not. That means that you have a certain period of time and if you do not allow then you have to sell your car, have another car or just you also can get sometimes an amount of money to just put your car away and to have a subscription for public transport and so on. So there are very tough measures, I think that's good. We invest a lot in what we call bike highways to make sure that people can commute easily with their bike. Electric bikes very often. So very, very concrete actions and then you have to monitor you have to see whether all these measures have really the effect of dealing with the goals that you are putting. I just mentioned that we have a very big petrochemical cluster that means that all those enterprises produce a huge amount of heat. At this moment still too much heat is lost and I really want like the rest heat so the heat that is lost that it is used as the energy source for other companies so that they can reuse it so you have to make close networks. We have now enterprises that are really working on it to make sure that the waste heat of one enterprise can be used as a rough material or as an energy source for another. So very on a daily base and mainly also by organizing a kind of competition making sure what are the goals. Exchange of ideas working together in international networks to make sure that the Covenant of Mayors is not just something on paper but that you realize it. So if they subscribe it and they are protesting against a project for a windmill always take their engagement and say why are you against? You really said that you want to obtain that goal. So although you have some protest from people around we have to make sure that by talking with people you really realize that project and that's the way we deal with it. How do all the stakeholders responsible? I'll just say two things. The first is ambition around the environment. So my belief is in the 21st century economy there are two big forces at play digitalization and decarbonization. And if you want to be a leader in the 21st century economy you have to be ambitious on both of those things. So I've set the goal in the Greater Manchester region that we will achieve carbon neutrality by 2040. Now it may not sound ambitious to some cities but it's 10 years ahead of the rest of the UK. And the reason I'm doing that is because I want Greater Manchester traditionally an industrial leader to be leading on the big trend in the 21st century economy. Because if we achieve carbon neutrality 10 years earlier than the rest the young people who will have developed skills in that area then can go to the rest of the UK and work and we will be the place that is ahead of everywhere and therefore we will get an economic benefit. And I think this is the key question with the environment. We have to sell the message that it is good for business. It's not all about burden and cost. If you are the most ambitious when it comes to zero carbon you are putting yourself in the strongest position as an individual business or as a wider economy to succeed in the 21st century. And I don't think that message has really landed really. People hear environment they hear cost and burden. And you've got to align it now with saying you know zero carbon means very efficient future ready and then equipping your workforce with the skills that they can benefit from. So that's the big ambition we've set that on to the second issue more specific air quality. Absolutely agree with Mayor Berks Governor Berks sorry about taking more direct action. Polluted air I think is the silent of the invisible public health emergency. I think we've been instructed by the UK government to develop a clean air plan by the end of this year. And when we've looked at it and we've gone into the detail we've found that our problem with polluted air is much worse than we realized. And actually it's a real question of health inequality and injustice because it's the kids in the poorest areas that are breathing in the most polluted air. And it's effectively like them breathing in cigarette smoke on the way to school but cause people can't see it. Oh well no one. Well no it's it's got to be much more urgent I think than then we've made it. So all of the measures that Governor Berks spoke about we're thinking about you know restrictions on polluting vehicles. I've put a massive investment into cycling and walking provision based on the Belgium and Netherlands model. Planting a tree for every man, woman and child in Greater Manchester three million trees. This needs serious and urgent attention because I would say it's the biggest public health challenge after cigarette smoke that we're now facing. Fascinating. You have both listening to all three of you you have both the vision and also very pragmatic solutions. You put numbers you put the actual solutions. You put the deadlines and you put that that's workable solution to that. It's fascinating and also just now you mentioned inequality. That's actually my second question because we talk about the powerless. We talk about the homeless and as the economy grows so fast the digital economy and will that widen the income gap or will that widen the actually the equality gap and how do you balance efficiency and fairness? Could I just deal with that one because I think that's the key question. I listened to the Premier speech this morning and what struck me about it is here in China the word globalization is still used as a positive word. You know, it's and understandably when you look around because of the way lives are improving for people here. But if you ask people in the UK is the word globalization a positive or a negative word? Well, what do you well, it wouldn't come out badly. And I think again, Brexit is a result of the failure to look at the negatives properly of globalization. The fact that it left places behind it left people behind and that has got a change. It's been a race to the bottom in some places and that has created social unfairness and resentment against those who are perceived to have more and I think it would come out badly and I think when we talk about the fourth industrial revolution we have to add to that good employment what is good and fair employment in the 21st century not just yeah, great in this technology and this digital this and green that what is it what is fair to people in terms of security of their employment? The reason why there's so much problem with homelessness in the UK at the moment is because some people have the toxic combination of insecure work and insecure housing they don't know how much they're going to earn every week because they're on something called a zero hours contract they can be told this week it's 20 hours next week it's 15 they don't know how much they're going to earn so therefore they can't be sure that they're going to pay the rent and the biggest cause of homelessness in Great Manchester is eviction from private rented property so if this is to succeed and if we're to stop kind of turbulence in politics Brexit is just the most extreme example of it it's an earthquake but everywhere else has got something of the same look at Italy even Germany recently you know everyone else has got something of this disease that we have got you know you have to reassess fairness I think within society and within organisations the gap between the lowest paid and the highest paid in organisations needs to narrow people need more security because they're meant why is mental health such a massive issue in the 21st century it's because people are living much more precarious lives they are closer to the edge every day can they feed the kids will they be able to pay the rent and that is eating away at their mental health and this is the 21st century disease the epidemic of insecurity is the issue and this forum needs to not just talk about the industry but the people who will work within that industry and they need to be carried carried with this change in a way that we fail to in the last two decades very often we make the analysis that the changes are going very fast and hard to follow but I don't think it's just an era of big changes but a change of era and that makes people angry that make people insecure that make people doubt about what is their future what will their position be so it's also a big responsibility for mayors and for governors I think to deal with it and to be very open about it but you ask the question whether the digitalization will lead to more inequality or less inequality I think it has the potential to lead to less inequality but what you always have to do is if you have a certain application or if you use it what are the effects in practical so you have to need very good ethical standards moral standards that you always be very good aware of what might be the effects because if people are in having a problem with their mental health and are like once we're in with a psychiatrist or whatever and it's on one way or another filed somewhere and if that's an issue for the application of algorithms to show whether you can have an insurance we can have a job or whatever it can lead to a terrible way of inequality and even reinforcement of that inequality because if the moment comes there that you have a burnout or a problem or a psychosis when you're young and if on one way or another those data are shared and are used for other applications where they have no relevance at all it might be very very dangerous so you have to be very very well aware of what might be the effect of the data the use of data the algorithms and at the end B's must take the decision and it must be human centered and not can be again as a great help because it can bring also information, knowledge at every place so it is so accessible all the information and the knowledge but you may have to make sure that people have the skills to deal with it to work with it and it cannot be used against people and enlarge inequality so be very well aware of what might be the effects I feel very good about the future if you're listening to these two you know I used to say that I didn't care about inequality that what I cared about was poverty and it didn't matter if people were really wealthy as long as you were working with people who were poor cities by definition are places where inequality thrives because urbanization through history has been driven by poor rural people coming to the city seeking opportunity but the very wealthy find their wealth in the wealth of the city and so I used to say I'm only focused on the poor Eight years into this job I realized that the nature of inequality itself even in a relatively wealthy place with a good social support system like Calgary is leading to social disruption and not positive social disruption and as we move towards a gig economy where people live in even more precarious existence where those basic social standards that basic contract of decency between the employer and the employee is breaking down we have to think more about this and one thing we have to be really really honest with ourselves about and I know I'm saying this at the World Economic Forum we have to be very honest with ourselves that executive compensation is out of control and that over the last ten years or so we have seen in the western world what can only be described as a Ponzi scheme or a shell game of executive compensation where the lowest paid person in the organization are spreading so far apart and it's not a natural human tendency it's because boards of directors have adopted a particular policy around executive compensation of peer grouping which automatically leads to massive inflation in executive compensation and I know I'm at the World Economic Forum with many people who benefited from that but we have to be honest with ourselves that that has led to much higher inequality in a world of unparalleled prosperity and it's something that we have to address so briefly I'll get off my soapbox and I'll tell you what we actually are doing one of the first things I did when I became mayor was setting up Calgary's first one of Canada's first community-based anti-poverty strategies it's called enough for all and there's a triple meaning in that one is that in a place as prosperous as we have there ought to be enough resources for everyone the second meaning is that the system that is dealing with people living in poverty has plenty of resources there ought to be enough to do a better job and the third is every person deserves enough to live a decent life a life of dignity and we don't have all the answers but we do know that having a community-wide view involving the private sector employers involving the public sector with our policies and income supports as well as the non-profit sector on the front lines of this work is really critical and the key here is to look at the whole system by putting the person who you're trying to help in the centre not the process, not the forms not the bureaucracy, the person and if we start that way the first line of our poverty reduction strategy in Calgary is very simple my neighbour's strength is my strength but if that's true if I'm better because you're better then the converse is also true my neighbour's failure is my failure and the more we think about our responsibility to one another is ultimately how we make sure that everyone in the city can live a life of dignity Can I clap? No, if you want It's very powerful messages and very sensible policies There was a book ten years ago in the UK The Spirit Level and it was basically what we've just heard why equality is better for everyone and it was very clear that the more Scandinavian, Benelux, other countries where the gap is smaller less crime, less drugs, better mental health the wider you go the more of all of those social ills and they hit the wealthy so it's quite a strong theory and I think we have let things get too unequal And we should address that before it's too late basically We have probably less than five minutes left and we're sure there are questions from the audience this gentleman first and this gentleman on the front row Thank you Thank you very much for the talk I'm from Bristol, so I'm currently living in Bristol and like you we have a very visionary leader in our city, Marvin Rees and so one thing that he's actually pushing very much for because I can see here there's quite a lot of global shapers so we essentially represent youth the World Economic Forum so we are 20 to 30 years old leaders in our own community so we have a global shipper here from Calgary as well and essentially my question is how do you involve youth in your decisions and in your strategies because they're also going to be the ones that are impacted and will be the future leaders Who do you want? Which panellists do you want to answer the question? Or all of them? Anyone? Who wants to take this? Youth in decision making When I stood as mayor I said I wanted to digital city, green city, young city that was my kind of and the reason I said that was because coming out of Westminster I had noticed how again that cynical national politics older voters have been prioritised at elections so pensions are always protected and free bus passes for pensioners and all of these things why? It was simple someone said it because they vote because they vote so all of those things and in 2010 when they were making savings they promised all those things to older voters and then they trebled tuition fees for university students they cut the education maintenance for 16 year olds so that's the way it's been going in the UK and I said well we're going to use devolution to change that young people are going to be the priority for investment not the target for cuts and so I'm bringing through some policies in that regard free travel for 16 to 18 year olds other things but here's the point though don't impose it on young people the thing about devolution of power to the city level means that you can involve people in the use of that power and I always say don't do too, do with design policies with young people so we have a youth combined authority in Greater Manchester we have a body that mirrors the authority and I was there talking to them last week and I said you know I will always bring policies to you before we agree them so that you can debate them for instance we're running a mental health service in schools now we've piloted it and they're going to now decide the shape of it before it goes into all secondary and primary schools in Greater Manchester do with young people, have them in the room in the conversation, don't pat them on the head and treat them as token over there let them make the decisions too what Andrew is also doing a lot is focusing on smart city IoT, living lab and so on and they're building actually a community of users of youngsters now it's about 20,000 people they can just register and they get a bunch of questions on what offer them the main challenges how they have a vision on what kind of solutions they would really want to have so you make it your decision taking process very responsive on what are the challenges as they are defined by young people themselves and what do they think about the solutions so it's all a question on co-creation, working together not just on thinking about something making a project or a solution and then giving information on that solution no no make it together with the people for whom you're making it that's I think the only solution and their young people probably they will not engage in very long periods of time on specific projects but short projects, very focused very down to earth they are very interested in it very nice, at this gentleman here thank you so much for what you've shared with us my name is Samad Amayo I'm from Adi South by Ethiopia I'm part of the young global leaders my question is I have two quick questions especially western cities have partnership with sister cities in other emerging markets but a lot of the sister city relationship are ceremonial there's not meaningful partnership or exchange of knowledge I wanted to know if you've done anything different around that if you have plans to improve that my second question is around the role of spectator sports in your city in your economy of course, the reason I say Manchester for example, Adi Sababa whenever Manchester is a united place the city stops I think we have more Manchester united fans than all of Manchester millions of people support that but you're starting to see a lot of cities spending huge amount of money in building arenas trying to attract, trying to retain spectator sports so what is that role and how important it is to your city to the spirit and to the economy so those are my questions I'll answer them both very quickly number one, I agree with you on sister cities there has got to be a way to actually make them useful I have not figured it out we have a couple of wonderful relationships five sort of morbid ones and you're right, we got to figure out a better way to make them smarter did you plant that question about building arenas that's actually one of the big political issues in Calgary right now and I will very simply say as I always do that public dollars must be spent for public benefit and that doesn't mean that there's not opportunities to assist profit making professional sports teams in the work they do because they do have public benefit but you have to do so in a way that is honest that is transparent that is open and that is affordable and I think in far too many places I'll criticize some of my fellow mayors they haven't done those things and if you're going to enter into a deal with any private sector organization you owe it to citizens to be open about what the cost to taxpayers will be and what the benefit will be do you want to add to the sports question I agree I think on the sister city, we're having some great discussions with Changin about graphene which is a material coming out of the University of Manchester we were in a very productive meeting with Changin this week so we need to build it, the thing that I would say is look at the US where the mayors and the cities where they opted back into Paris when Trump opted out that city is cleverly acting together and I think maybe we need more networks like that where we also agree the C40 on the environment is another example more like that maybe less ceremonial on the sport thing I'm going from here to Changin to open the new Manchester city office in Changin football is massively important to us it's not a kind of luxury it's huge for the Manchester United, we've got Pep and Jose Pep's a bit more and Jose's a bit there but it's an incredible thing to have two of probably the three biggest clubs in Europe in our city but it's a sport city more generally the Commonwealth Games in 2002 really helped galvanize regeneration Manchester city's ground now the old stadium so the thing I would say about I don't see maybe a little disagreement here for us it's not a luxury if you can afford it good sport culture music, anyone know the Smiths? anyone know New Order? anyone know we've got Oasis big Manchester bands as well and this again drives a huge amount of interest in the city to be honest that stuff drives the best regeneration I think things that people care about, they're passionate about are things that draw people in and then you get good regeneration on the back of it so no I'd put it at the heart of everything myself from the prejudice I do not with sports so that's for the mayor for the mayor so I invest a lot on culture especially also for you but what the sister relationships between cities we also emphasize a lot on the exchange of ideas with universities the collaboration between universities and knowledge centers and also the exchange of students and that really benefits because there are some students that come from China and studied in Antwerp 20 years ago and they made Mr. Right which is a very interesting series and a few episodes were taken in Antwerp and that gave a boost to tourism so it can also in the long term be very effective thank you so much I'm sure you are all as fascinated as I am with this panel and with the wonderful speakers because they're not just speakers, they're doers they don't just raise questions they give you solutions and practices we have a lot of take away I'm sure you will engage them in conversations as well but now please join me give a very big round of applause to our wonderful speakers today