Cities in global war for talent
Wellington may be bathing in accolades, but consultancy KPMG says the city still faces challenges in the global war for talent.
Cities – more than countries – are competing for top workers, Wellington civic leaders were advised at a meeting organised by networking group Kea as part of Techweek’17.
Entrepreneur Melissa ClarkReynolds, who lives in Roseneath, drew nervous laughter after forecasting Auckland would turn into a declining city.
That was because it was ‘‘so broken and designed around the car it can’t be one of the cities of the future’’, she said.
‘‘Last week it took me 21⁄2 hours to get to the airport from Parnell. That is a complete waste of productivity.’’
Wellington was named the world’s most livable city in a Deutsche Bank survey this month.
Public relations expert Peter Biggs said the fact 48,000 foreign technology workers had applied to relocate to the city through the council-backed LookSee initiative showed Wellington was ‘‘building something remarkable’’.
Wellington was well on track to becoming the ‘‘most prosperous, livable and vibrant’’ region in Australasia by 2025, he believed.
KPMG consultant Simon Hunter, who lives in Auckland, said under-exploited opportunities included capitalising on the reputation of the country’s public sector, and trying to build that into an export business.
Wellington was ‘‘a great place to live’’, but he cautioned it was not all peachy for the capital.
‘‘Headwinds’’ included the city’s housing market constraints. ‘‘You have got to solve that for this to be a great city.’’
Hunter said he was also staggered to see a 3 per cent annual decline in the number of people employed in the ‘‘information, media and telecoms’’ sectors in the capital between 2006 and 2016.
KPMG had studied 100 major cities and had concluded the biggest ingredient in success was attracting the right people, he said.
Universities were always outstanding contributors to successful cities, KPMG found.
But Hunter added ‘‘inequality’’ to the list of issues that city visionaries had to tackle.
‘‘We have got to have cities that are inclusive, to be prosperous. If we don’t, those cities will fail.’’
While all the world’s population growth over the next 20 years would be in cities, there were many examples of those that were failing, he said. About a quarter of the 100 cities KPMG had studied were in economic decline.
Clark-Reynolds said Wellington should be ‘‘much more bold’’ about pedestrianising the inner city.
‘‘I have no idea why there are allowed to be any sort of cars from Lambton Quay through to Courtenay Place,’’ she said.
She also saw opportunities for urban agriculture, noting a trend for food to be grown for the restaurant trade using hydoponics.
Fairfax Media is the media partner for Techweek’17, a week of events bringing New Zealand’s brightest technology and innovation talent together to tackle global issues with local ingenuity from May 6-14. Visit techweek.co.nz.