The Chamberlain News

Chicago is Clancy’s kind of town….. and it has that razzmatazz

Birmingham and Chicago are to explore closer trading links in an attempt to boost their economies in the light of declining central government funding.

City council leader John Clancy, returning from the Chicago Forum on Global Cities, said he was particularly keen to work with the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, to boost the advanced manufacturing and life sciences sectors “which hold the key to future prosperity for our cities”.

Cllr Clancy said many of the city leaders in Chicago, from places like Bangkok, Philadelphia, Guangzhou, Warsaw, New Orleans and Kiev, faced similar challenges and opportunities:

At a time when governments across the world are reducing funding for local government, we must all find new ways of bringing capital into our cities. That’s just a fact of life and the leaders I met last week are all up for the challenge.

Indeed how we meet that challenge has never been more important because it’s clear that cities hold the key to economic growth across the world.

Insisting that Birmingham is “a confident city punching its weight on a global stage”, Cllr Clancy said part of his role was to represent the city internationally. He added:

Cities are centres of innovation and creativity. And from the Industrial Revolution onwards, cities have been the engine-room of successful economies.

Fast-forward to 2016, the factories may be fewer and the chimneys may have gone but the driving force remains.

Chicago has been a twin city of Birmingham since 1993 when the relationship was established to maximise business opportunities between Birmingham and the West Midlands and Chicago and the American Mid-West.

Cllr Clancy continued:

Like Birmingham, Chicago is an old industrial powerhouse that has had to re-invent itself in recent years and, just as we see in our own great city, that process of re-invention continues even now.

That’s why Mayor Emanuel and I discussed how advanced manufacturing and life sciences hold the key to future prosperity for our cities.

I visited the  – an innovative project bringing together leading companies, local government, researchers and entrepreneurs to develop new products and processes in digital manufacturing and design.

Similar to our own , DMDII is an innovative project bringing together leading companies, researchers and entrepreneurs to develop new products and processes in digital manufacturing and design.

Because of those similarities, Rahm Emanuel and I discussed the potential for ever-closer links between our two great cities. And these international links can have very real benefits for the people of Birmingham.

Since 1991 companies from the USA have invested in 152 Birmingham projects, creating over 8,000 jobs and safeguarding a further 18,500 jobs. Almost 30,000 households have benefitted “because we live in a city that consistently attracts international investment”, Cllr Clancy stated.

He added:

Our international relationships undoubtedly strengthen our standing as a global city but they also benefit individual Brummies, their families and communities.

Hopefully we’ll see future opportunities created thanks to mutually beneficial links with Chicago and other major cities across the world.