00:00Good afternoon everyone. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to New York City.
00:07Many of you have traveled thousands of miles to join us and we are so delighted that you did.
00:13I want to thank all those who organized this conference, the many who have planned the logistics needed to bring
00:19the world together,
00:20and all those who continue to believe, as I do, in the deep value of international cooperation.
00:26And I want to acknowledge those who have convened us, C40 Cities and UCLG, in partnership with the Mayor's Migration
00:33Council.
00:34I've been thinking these past days about the world gathering here in New York City.
00:41How no matter where you come from, you will find something here that feels like home.
00:47It is my favorite thing about New York. How it contains a million worlds in one.
00:54Visitors from China can find food that tastes like what they grew up eating in not one, but three Chinatowns.
01:00Visitors from Turkey or Korea can dip into the baths that both remind them of Istanbul or Seoul and immediately
01:06cure jet lag.
01:07And if you are the Mayor of Manchester, you can stand shoulder to shoulder with New Yorkers in a crowded
01:12bar as your club,
01:13whichever one you support, puts in a performance markedly worse than Arsenal.
01:18Although, honestly, this morning was a very tough one if anyone was watching.
01:22In all seriousness, I have been thinking, too, about how New York City seeks to understand these many worlds,
01:28how we display them, and how we share them with those we are so delighted to welcome to our city.
01:33In short, my friends, I have been thinking about the concept of the museum.
01:38Each of our cities have world-class museums that we are so proud of.
01:42Amsterdam has the Rijksmuseum, Jakarta has the Elephant Museum, Paris has L'Invalid.
01:50New York is no exception.
01:52People travel thousands of miles to see the masterpieces housed at the Met,
01:57the incredible artifacts displayed at the New York Transit Museum,
02:00the history and fauna brought to life at the Museum of Natural History.
02:03And yet, I know that I am speaking to a collection of leaders devoted to a shared purpose,
02:09preserving the museum and the city as distinct concepts.
02:14All around us, there are enormous forces seeking to flatten the distance between the two.
02:19There is the cost of living crisis, which we know is not constrained by borders.
02:23When New Yorkers cannot afford to send their children to childcare,
02:26when Barcelonians cannot afford a home in the city,
02:29when Torontonians cannot afford the cost of public transit,
02:32our cities no longer remain places that working people can live and shape,
02:37but museums that we observe from afar,
02:40great monuments to a once-joyful past that perhaps we can visit one weekend a month.
02:46There is the growing impact of the climate crisis,
02:49when rising sea levels make flooding a regular occurrence in low-lying parts of our five boroughs,
02:55or when soaring temperatures push Freetown residents out of neighborhoods where they have lived for generations,
03:01or when you cannot endure a summer in Rome without air conditioning.
03:04The working people leave, and all that remain are the wealthy who can afford these costs,
03:09and marble statues that do not sweat under the sun.
03:13And we must contend with a moment where authoritarianism and far-right movements are ascendant,
03:18when anti-democratic sentiment is on the rise,
03:22when leaders both in the United States and overseas make it their mission to demonize and terrorize immigrants,
03:28when they seek to accumulate political capital by targeting our LGBTQIA plus neighbors,
03:33when they roll back the freedoms that have been hard won by the press or those fighting for reproductive or
03:39civil rights,
03:40our cities become darker, lonelier places,
03:43and our monuments to the progress of the past come to possess a cruel sort of irony.
03:49We cannot allow this to come to pass.
03:51The work of making our cities belong to everyone,
03:55no matter how much they earn or where they come from,
03:57is a shared purpose that we are all so fortunate to hold.
04:00From Konya to Copenhagen, from Milan to Mexico City,
04:04what an immense opportunity we possess
04:06to expand freedom to as many people as possible,
04:10to prove that democracy does not only live in the ballot box,
04:14but in material improvements we deliver to our constituents' lives,
04:17and to show that good governance is not an abstract idea,
04:21but rather a force felt each time a bus runs faster,
04:25each time a roof does not leak when it rains,
04:28and each time someone can afford a dignified life in the city they love.
04:32I am so grateful that we are together for the next few days to discuss this work,
04:36because what we are all trying to achieve is deeply interconnected.
04:40For we know that solidarity is not just a slogan.
04:43It is a practice, and as we hold panels, conversations, and plenary sessions,
04:48my sincere hope is that this conference marks only the beginning
04:52of a new era of cooperation and emulation.
04:55Let us learn what succeeded and failed
04:58from the initiatives those in this room have led.
05:01Let us ask questions and then take back what we learned to our cities.
05:04Let the relationships we form here endure for years to come,
05:08and let us lean on one another in times of success and adversity alike.
05:12The people of the world look to our cities for greatness.
05:16They expect it in the art we create,
05:18the architectural marvels we build,
05:20the coexistence across cultures that exist
05:23with unparalleled harmony in the urban centers we lead.
05:26Together we can create a new expectation
05:28of public greatness from those same cities.
05:31When the world is straining to find a way to overcome inequality,
05:35to defeat authoritarianism, to chart a future of progress,
05:38let them look to our cities as proof that it is, in fact, possible.
05:42After all, the global challenges we face cannot be solved in isolation.
05:47Our cities can and must be laboratories of innovation,
05:51places where new initiatives are tested, developed,
05:53and then expanded at larger scale,
05:55places that set new standards in how we serve the people of the world.
06:00It is an enormous privilege to welcome you all to New York City
06:03and to do this work alongside you.
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06:20See you next time.
06:22Bye-bye.
06:22Bye-bye.
06:23Bye.
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