The flagship Destination City programme aiming to attract more visitors and businesses to the Square Mile has now lost all reference to its 8000 or so residents – despite a recommendation that we should be consulted as reliable ‘eyes and ears’ of daily life in the City of London with interests often matching those of visitors.
Earlier this month the City Corporation’s Culture, Heritage and Libraries committee was given a presentation on Destination City. There’s a Youtube recording here, but no written report was available. As I reported in this post about resident engagement councillor Deborah Oliver criticised that omission – and the lack of any reference to residents – as disrespectful. Here’s a link to that in the video.
I gather the slide presentation is now available to councillors, so it’s a good time to pick up the issue.
As you can see from the video Destination City is presented as the growth strategy of the Square Mile, with the ambition “To position the City as a magnetic destination – for businesses, workers and visitors. A key slide says:
”Destination City is the growth strategy for the Square Mile as a location. In the decade ahead, the City aims to be a globally attractive place for businesses, a major centre for talent, attracting workers, and a place that people want to visit and return to. Our future success relies on being a welcoming and inclusive destination for all.
No mention there or elsewhere in the presentation of residents befitting from, or playing any part in Destination City. This is in contrast to the tone of the independent review of the Destination City programme carried out by Paul Martin, available here. The review recommended a move from the initial programme, focussed on major events like Bartholomew Fair, to a programme rooted in the unique attractions offered by the City’s culture and heritage.
Paul offered a preview to a Citizens Forum event, organised by councillor Brendan Barns in February this year. Here’s a transcript, including emphasis on partnerships:
I’m thinking of cultural and heritage organisations, the Livery companies, the BIDs, businesses themselves, resident organisations – we need to think how we can harness the totality of these enormous and extraordinary community assets to achieve the goals of Destination City.
In the full report, Paul emphasises how residents can both benefit from the programme, and contribute to it. Here’s some relevant sections:
6.5 . Importantly, there is a high level of congruity between what visitors, workers and residents look for in the city – their interests are not competing or mutually exclusive, but highly compatible.
8.13 The approach proposed for Destination City in this review focuses on benefits which would be experienced by residents, city workers and visitors and indeed a central tenet of authentic destinations is to focus on interventions that will benefit the locals, and this will inevitably attract visitors as well.
14.5 A particular emphasis is given to the need for regular resident’s satisfaction survey as residents are reliable ‘eyes and ears’ of daily life in the city.
Brendan admirably developed that theme by asking residents at a Forum event about favourite locations, improvements to the Square Mile and sources of information. I reported the insights here.
Unfortunately Brendan was removed from his role as residents envoy to Destination City. He was replaced by Jacqui Webster, who has a general responsibility for resident engagement, and also a place on the Destination City Advisory Board.
I hope Jacqui will now remake the case for resident involvement.
For reference here’s what the Corporations policy chief and leader, Chris Hayward, said in June last year:
“if you feel we’re not consulting widely enough on Destination City, or the more engagement residents could have, we want to know how precisely we do it … we want Destination City to be owned by the residents as much as by anybody else.”
Clearly there’s been a shift in policy. I hope other councillors will follow Deborah Oliver’s lead in challenging that, and also ask for the slides to be publicly available with some clarification on the role of residents.
I think Chris Hayward got it right first time, and there’s scope for residents to make a positive contribution to Destination City, and benefit from programmes like public realm improvements.
The last resident question time was run by Jacqui as a forum, rather than a traditional Q and A session. Why not pick up on the approach pioneered by Brendan, and run a creative session expanding on residents ideas for Destination City.