Philadelphia & London: Cities of Revolution

Sometimes it takes seeing your own national customs through the eyes of another to recognise their strangeness. I was honoured to join Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia on his trade delegation to London at the start of November, and one night, as we were having dinner at a riverside restaurant, there was a brilliant fireworks display going on over the Thames. I explained to the mayor and his team the significance of Bonfire Night in the UK – 1605, revolutionary sentiments, Guy Fawkes, trying to blow up Parliament and so on – but had forgotten how odd it is to commemorate with a big party the near-destruction of one’s government. At any rate, it gave some local context to the fire alarm that had gone off during our tour of Parliament earlier in the week.

Of course, Philadelphia has its own revolutionary history. The pre-visit reception was held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, overlooking the historic buildings where the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted. As a Brit, I have always found a warm welcome in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, and I’m not alone. There are now around 230 British companies based in Philadelphia, and more than 650 in its wider region. As Mayor Nutter told me, these companies – which include GlaxoSmithKline, the Mark Group, and Aberdeen Asset Management – play a vital role in Philadelphia’s economy, providing jobs for some of the million people in the US who work for British companies (just as there are a million people in the UK working for American businesses).

And Philadelphia is a great city to work in. Roughly equidistant between Washington and New York, it offers lower business and living costs than either and a thriving cultural life, including one of the largest public art collections in the country (Robert Indiana’s famous “LOVE” sculpture, for instance) and the world-class Philadelphia Orchestra (which’ll be in London in 2015). There’s loads of sport, including plenty of rowing (much more relaxing to watch than it ever was to do). Philadelphia is smart, too: more than 37.5% of its 25- to 34-year-olds have a bachelor’s degree, 6% above the national average. So the Mayor had a lot to sell to British audiences.

And, as he found out, London has considerable selling points for Philadelphian businesses looking to expand abroad, too. Mayor Nutter had a packed itinerary organised by UK Trade & Investment, the foreign commercial arm of the British government (official visit Tumblr here). The Museum of London was home to a reception for 200 business people from both the UK and Philadelphia, all interested in the benefits of investing in each other’s economies. The Mayor made a friendly call on HRH The Earl of Wessex, who has long-standing ties to Philly, and visited 10 Downing Street, the Olympic Park, Tech City (the home of East London’s fast-expanding tech community) and Big Ben (interestingly, Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and Big Ben the Bell were both cast at London’s Whitechapel Foundry).

The visit was a brilliant opportunity to showcase to the Philly delegation what’s especially GREAT about Britain right now. The high-tech growth in Tech City and the Olympic Park in particular are excellent examples of how up-and-coming British businesses are thinking innovatively and disruptively in their fields. And the infrastructural elements around the Olympic Park were, I sensed, an immediate inspiration to the Philadelphia team thinking about their own development plans around the international airport, waterfront and roads back home.

This visit was a fabulous opportunity for both cities to flaunt their best and brightest, opening doors to a future where both sides benefit from stronger bilateral trade. This is a key priority for the UK government right now, as negotiations continue over the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which it’s estimated would add $280 billion in GDP and two million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. This could – and it’s that R word again – revolutionise how we do things, making trade simpler and more profitable for all. Pennsylvania alone would benefit from a projected increase of 29.8% in exports to the EU and nearly 34,000 new jobs. That’s the kind of revolution everyone can support.