Youth Olympics on Singapore Waterfront

The Singpore Waterfront is a busy place. It will have a major role to play in the 2010 Youth Olympics being hosted there in a few weeks. As I wondered round there, all of a sudden this band of drummer kids came racing past...

... hundreds of them. I found out there were all sorts of rehearsals for events happening. If you look past that large brown box in the middle distance, you will see what caught my eye down there....

A huge puppet, and if you look at its feet you can see hundreds of kids up to their ankles in water. They are reheasring - who knows what - splashing of water was a major part of it, and sound effects and music like I've never heard...

I never did find out what the chrome monster is just the other side. And by the way. This is all happening on a floating stadium. If you scroll back up you will see how this platform is moored against the waterfront for this event. The other major event happening in Singapore streets, a few weeks after the Youth Olympics is Formular One racing. In the city streets. Talk about a happening place.

This visit made me think a little about Auckland's aspirations on the global stage. Singapore is one hard act to follow. I checked out Wikipaedia.

One of the first attempts to define, categorize, and rank global cities was made in 1998 by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC) based at the geography department of Loughborough University, United Kingdom. The roster was outlined in the GaWC Research Bulletin 5 and ranked cities based on their provision of "advanced producer services" such as accountancy, advertising, finance, and law.[5] The GaWC inventory identifies three levels of global cities and several sub-ranks. This roster generally denotes cities in which there are offices of certain multinational corporations providing financial and consulting services rather than denoting other cultural, political, and economic centres.

The 2004 rankings acknowledged several new indicators while continuing to rank city economics more heavily than political or cultural factors. The 2008 roster, similar to the 1998 version is sorted into categories of "Alpha" world cities (with four sub-categories), "Beta" world cities (three sub-categories), "Gamma" world cities (three sub-categories), and cities with "High sufficiency" or "Sufficiency" world city presence.

The 2008 roster of leading Alpha, Beta and Gamma World Cities is reproduced below:

Alpha World Cities ++: London, New York

Alpha World Cities +: Hong Kong, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Milan, Shanghai, Beijing

Alpha World Cities: Madrid, Moscow, Seoul, Toronto, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Chicago

Alpha World Cities –: Warsaw, São Paulo, Zürich, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Jakarta, Dublin, Bangkok, Taipei, Istanbul, Rome, Lisbon, Frankfurt am Main, Stockholm, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Athens, Caracas, Los Angeles, Auckland, Santiago

Beta World Cities +: Washington, Melbourne, Johannesburg, Atlanta, Barcelona, San Francisco, Manila, Bogotá, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, Dubai, Bucharest

Beta World Cities: Oslo, Berlin, Helsinki, Geneva, Copenhagen, Riyadh, Hamburg, Cairo, Luxembourg, Bangalore, Dallas, Kuwait City, Boston

Beta World Cities –: Munich, Jeddah, Miami, Lima, Kiev, Houston, Guangzhou, Beirut, Karachi, Düsseldorf, Sofia, Montevideo, Nicosia, Rio de Janeiro, Ho Chi Minh City

Gamma World Cities +: Montreal, Nairobi, Bratislava, Panama City, Chennai, Brisbane, Casablanca, Denver, Quito, Stuttgart, Vancouver, Zagreb, Manama, Guatemala City, Cape Town, San José, Minneapolis, Santo Domingo, Seattle

Gamma World Cities: Ljubljana, Shenzhen, Perth, Kolkata, Guadalajara, Antwerp, Philadelphia, Rotterdam, Amman, Portland, Lagos

Gamma World Cities –: Detroit, Manchester, Wellington, Riga, Guayaquil, Edinburgh, Porto, San Salvador, St. Petersburg, Tallinn, Port Louis, San Diego, Islamabad, Birmingham, Doha, Calgary, Almaty, Columbus

So there you go. Interesting. But you can see that Auckland has a long way to go. And frankly, when you think of NZ's extraordinary isolation from its markets (draw a circle 500kms, then one 1000kms, then one 1500 kms, and finally your 2000 km circle takes in Sydney), you begin to see that jumping from low down the OECD ranking to number 2 (where we were in the 1950's) will be an impossible task. Might as well aspire to something different....