Build an idea, grow a city

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By: Steven Chen

On Sept. 11, McMaster initiated a yearlong series, “Big Ideas, Better Cities” at the David Braley Health Sciences Centre in downtown Hamilton.

The yearlong series of events promotes the role of university research in overcoming twenty-first century issues. Funded through McMaster’s Forward with Integrity initiative, “Big Ideas, Better Cities,” is the product arising from extensive collaboration between the university community and city officials. Each event is prepared by an interdisciplinary group of researchers and will focus on various themes relevant to the city of Hamilton—ranging from the impact of aging on society, the vital role of healthy neighbourhoods in building city life, to the impact of climate change on public policy and community health.

The event on Friday, Sept. 11 featured Stephen Huddart, President and CEO of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, who gave a keynote talk on “How Universities Can Help Make Cities Great.”

“Universities and cities have so much that they can do together,” said Huddart. “They have the potential to shape cities that work for everybody—cities that are positioning themselves for the next generation to succeed with meaningful work and cities that are successful in creating the unique and generating spaces that distinguish themselves.”

The talk addressed the challenge of urban poverty for cities like Hamilton.

“The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction has been doing really important work in this area using the collective impact approach, and we’re seeing positive signs of improvement there,” said Huddart, “but frankly it’s not moving as fast as we would hope and so I think we need to be asking ourselves what more can we do.”

Huddart believes that in order to combat the urban poverty within the Hamilton region, it is crucial to propagate initiatives such as the Living Wage campaign and to encourage investments in the social economy.

“Anchor institutions in Hamilton [need] to come together and pool their purchasing power to support the development of new enterprises, including worker-owned cooperatives.”

The proposed plan for enterprise development involves having anchor institutions act as built-in customers. It is a means of ensuring that companies undergo business development and provide proper training knowing that there is the safety of a pre-established customer base.

Huddart believes that undergraduate education is an additional topic of concern, as lecture-style teaching at the undergraduate level offers little advantage to online courses that can be accessible at little to no cost.

“I think part of the answer [to how universities can make their experience valuable],” explains Huddart, “is by giving students the opportunity to work on real-world issues in real places. This means putting further emphasis on research involving local issues, on service learning and on developing partnerships with community institutions.”

The notion that there is great potential for students to make a direct difference in the community while pursuing career and business opportunities was underlined throughout the talk.

“Students are not interested in making money simply for money’s sake,” said Huddart. “We live in times when we all need to make a difference, and I think young people today are ready to step up.”

The “Big Ideas, Better Cities” series brings forth a positive conversation between McMaster and the city of Hamilton with the aim of fuelling collaboration.

“I think we need a lot more that,” said Huddart, “there is too much silo-ing and too much institutional ego getting in the way of moving forward together on the issues that matter.”

Subsequent segments of the “Big Ideas, Better Cities” series—each of which addresses critical issues or innovations—are expected to take place throughout the year. Upcoming talks include: “Living Long, Living Well,” featuring Dr. Parminder Raina on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1, and “Better Communities Through Better Data,” featuring A. Abigail Payne on Nov. 3 and 4. More information can be found on the project’s website.

“I think the point we wish to make, is that social innovation looks at how we can turn challenges into economic opportunities,” Huddart said. “It is vital for us to confront the challenge of changing our systems so that people can go to work on creating positive outcomes.”

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