In search of ambition

Brian YS Wong January 26, 2025 22:09

What makes or breaks a world-class city?

Some would posit the answer rests with infrastructure – the more modern and advanced the hardware, the more developed the software. Others would advocate we prioritised talent development: human resources and capital comprise the bulwark of what drives cities forward, and we should double down on attracting, cultivating, and retaining the best talents. Techno-futurists would insist that technology is the decisive factor, whereas more conventional financial economists may opt to concentrate on the depth and quality of the capital pool.

In my view, what has driven the ebbs and flows of great cities throughout human history – from Babylon to Changan, from Rome to Edo – is the quality of ambition. Ambition is necessary but insufficient for greatness: not just of individual leaders or personalities, but of entire peoples and settlements, from cities to states, states to empires.

A city that lives and breathes ambition, is one that naturally attracts talent, brings in capital, and can advance a truly forward-thinking vision that equips its people with hope. In contrast, a lackluster navel-gazing, and complacent city would inevitably be consigned to the dustbins of history. Cities are dynamic, fluid, and constantly negotiated structures: the failure to seize upon such innate mobility and transience has proven to be the hamartia of many a bureaucrat.

In watching the wonderful musical film “In the Heights”, I was struck by the heroic number performed by the barrio’s Abuela, “Paciencia y Fe”. In it she speaks of her journey from Cuba – as a young immigrant accompanying her mother to the promised land of America. Whilst her childhood home in Havana was wholesome, tranquil, and filled with memories of affection, it was “Nueva York” that promised work, opportunities, food, and upward mobility. Like generations of Latin American migrants who came before and after her, Abuela arrived into New York penniless, “young, scrappy, and hungry”.

The American Dream, of course, proved to be a mixed bag – she spent most of her life working as a dishwasher, cleaner, and servant serving many a family, but dies surrounding by her adopted family in Washington Heights. The beauty of New York, as Frank Sinatra puts it, is that “if [one] can make it here, [one] can make it anywhere.”

The absence of overt and proactive government interference comes with its drawbacks – crimes, dilapidated infrastructure, and general grittiness and dirtiness, for instance. Yet such a laissez-faire approach to municipal governance has also thus given rise to an unprecedented level of economic and personal autonomy. Alicia Keys’ “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” promises abundance amidst tribulations and flourishing amidst imperfections. Indeed, it is the constant emphasis upon striving, aspiration, trial and error that makes for the greatness of the city – for the sky is the limit.

From property and real estate moguls to tech entrepreneurs who thrive on the colourful and vivacious financial scene on Wall Street, from international diplomats to leading academics, New York has proven to be time and time again where new ceilings are shattered and grounds are broken. Ambition amongst its denizens is rewarded, even if non-linearly and unevenly.

London, too, is a city filled with great ambition. In recognising that the UK could never comprehensively reclaim its erstwhile seat of being the world’s leading military and economic power, Britain has settled happily for a world where it would continually lead in soft and financial power.

Despite Brexit, today, London not only stands as a critical bastion of legal and financial services in the Western Hemisphere, servicing a sizeable number of high-net-worth individuals – it also plays the crucial role of informing and facilitating intellectual discovery and vital knowledge enquiry.

From institutions such as the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and University College London, to leading AI research laboratories and centres (DeepMind), through to a raft of long-established and venerated think-tanks (e.g. Chatham House, RUSI), there is much that the city has to offer. The people of London know very well what the city (and the country at large) is not. Yet they are perfectly content with pursuing and maximising their strengths, as much as possible.
Boston is another fascinating case study. Despite being the 7th largest metropolitan region in the US, the Boston-Cambridge urban axis has proven to be an essential engine of knowledge generation and growth in modern America. With institutions such as Harvard and the MIT spearheading pioneering research, and a salubrious arts and cultural scene, Boston epitomises the adage “quality over quantity”. What matters is less the absolute size of its GDP or economy, than the diversity and dexterity of world-class academics and innovators the highly livable (albeit expensive) city draws to its mix.

I spend a lot of time in Southeast Asia. ASEAN, too, is increasingly brimming with ambition – from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, from Jakarta to Ho Chi Minh. There is thirst, eagerness, and a yearning to put these cities on the map on the part of their administrators and politicians. As for their denizens, there is a palpable and invigorating sense of energy – a measured and concentrated frenzy – that drives them to go above and beyond the mundane, routine, and the extraordinary.
If we are to fix a city, we must search for and revitalise its ambitious inner soul. Without ambition, it can have no future.

Brian YS Wong

Assistant Professor, HKU