Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 2019 | Page 32

WROCLAW—A PHOENIX CITY WITH THE INNOVATION GENE
It is fairly easy to write a sweetened personal eulogy, as the role of those taking the city
lead after 1989 is unquestionable. And they already became iconic personalities, especially
Rafał Dutkiewicz�a super President�the title awarded after winning three times
the poll on the best city mayor in Poland. Interesting is however how all that happened
and what were the driving forces and key actions in this unprecedented success. What
thoughts guided the leaders and the people? Dutkiewicz often quotes Florida (2014)
with his 3-T but adding the fourth T (Tożsamość in Polish, meaning Identity). But in my
opinion, the real driving force was the gene of innovation present in all who recreated
the city, not from scratch, but fully observing and creatively adopting the 1000-year cultural
history of Wroclaw (Davies and Moorhouse 2002).
Wroclaw is a truly academic city with several first-class academic establishments, but
first of all with about 150 thousand students. This is a mighty intellectual army, which
will shape the future of not only Wroclaw. Today every tenth student in Europe is Polish,
almost the same number as German, French or British�all from much larger countries
in Europe. But their education is not just a knowledge intake. Their student life means
participation in city life, especially cultural. They are also a driving force of a “green responsibility.”
This is why Wroclaw fought for and won the European Capital of Culture
award in 2016 (European Commission 2016) and now gets prepared for the same honour,
but as a “green city.” I am sure it will soon get the title. The Dutkiewicz’s visionary
engine aiming at stars will not stop, simply because it is in the genes of the Wroclawers.
But in a real-life, the ideas are only at a premium. Money is needed. And as once simply
described by Dutkiewicz, who is a trained mathematician and entrepreneur in the
HR business, the wealth of the community is determined by the amount of money flow
(buying power). And that is a simple product of the population and an average salary.
The first cannot be increased easily, but the second can when the higher paid jobs would
dominate the market. And that is possible only by strengthening the intellectual capital
of the creative class. It just means, education, knowledge creation and unleashing creativity
and entrepreneurship. Those were the fundaments of Wroclaw's growth in the last
few decades. And as a result, Wroclaw became the fastest growing metropolitan economy
in Poland to the current position of being the second wealthiest city after the capital
Warsaw. And this is why from the very start, all planning and forecasting have been done
in the MAB triangle, namely�municipality, academia, and business. It is just another
face of the “Solidarność” movement and spirit. Cooperation, involvement, and taking
responsibility�the very essence of democracy and civic society.
Job Creation and the Creative Class
We observe the dramatic growth of unemployment among young Europeans,
especially in Southern Europe. Many of them run for higher education hoping
to find good job at the market. At the same time, we observe very large emigration
of talents�mainly to the USA. Also, the intra Europe brain drain (mostly from
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