SEPTEMBER 2024
It’s a trip to see Brooklyn Bridge Park, marking its 20th anniversary, getting love of late. On one hand, BBP is a feat of urban renewal whose scale, imagination and evolution have few equals. On the other, the park’s Pier 5, home to Tribeca Festival’s annual “industry” soccer tournament, got the wheels turning for us, a decade ago, about a series that explores the nexus of cities and sport—namely, football.
Which, at its heart, inquired: If a thriving media and creative sector can be a strategic priority and hallmark of economic dynamism, how might a sport like football/soccer—touching infrastructure to internationalism—uniquely frame, if not bolster, a “global city” vision and blueprint?
Lo, down the rabbit hole we went. In the time since, we’ve been privileged to unpack the thesis with everyone from Ambassador Nina Hachigian at the US State Department to TfL’s Andy Byford to the heads of cities and sustainability at Mastercard, Monocle’s Andrew Tuck and the incomparable sports leads at Gensler. Foreign policy, climate resiliency, mobility, labor relations, design and the built environment are but a few topics through which, despite covering a lot of ground, we’ve only skimmed the surface.
If there’s a binding thread, it’s one that resonates forcefully this year and we hope carries forward: notions of a middle-of-the-road, brass-tacks progressivism, whether in business or policymaking, that transcends ideology. The underpinnings of the New Economy, if you will. By no coincidence, it’s an intuition for development, governance and stewardship that tends to flourish and endure at the local level.
As ahead of things as we thought we were back in the day, little did we see Miami setting the pace and tone for our build-up to FIFA World Cup North America. And yet, in so many ways, the burgeoning global capital epitomizes the brief. So much so, in fact, that it will remain a center of gravity for us through 2026.
But it’s also why New York City—host to the tournament final, a growing pipeline to Miami, and where all of this got started—is the perfect place to get the ball rolling. Whereas Concordia’s Americas Summit this past spring was, for us, a story-gathering mission, its forthcoming Annual Summit, Sept 23-25, is the springboard into a focus on the Magic City that comes to life through a run of Seven Asides (Franklin Sirmans, director of Pérez Art Museum Miami, up first). A print “special,” our first paper edition since before COVID lockdown, will also be published for summit delegates.
As gratifying as it is to finally push this live, we’re mindful it’s just the beginning. We hope you’ll stay with us as the coming months unfold.
Santiago, a consultancy, media company and creative/design studio, publishes Kit Magazine