Forward thinking Cape Town

Tags:

Cape_Town ideas

Posted by:

Joshin Raghubar
03 April 2007.
Project: Blog .

I attended the second Forward Thinkers Forum this morning. The Forum is a loose gathering of people, facilitated by Ernst & Young, to debate and discuss ideas and issues in the spirit of ensuring Cape Town is a compelling place to live, work, and play, in a global and regional context, for a long time to come.

Guy Lundy, CEO of the newly formed private sector body Accelerate Cape Town, led a discussion about the Cape Town we may want 20 years ahead, rooted in the context of where we are now. Cape Town’s market, products (industries and service sectors), values, uniqueness, and other issues all came up for discussion.

An idea I put forward was about Cape Town’s positioning. Rather than pursuing a difficult path of going toe-to-toe for positioning against global CITIES like New York, Barcelona, and Melbourne, let us realise we’ll never be bigger than our name – Cape TOWN – and re-frame this positively. Let’s position Cape TOWN as the best and the coolest town in the world where everything you could want is in close proximity- a vibrant, diverse, globally connected community with easy-living town values. It is a compelling story and an idea worth mulling over.

What do you think?