Challenger Cities Ottawa Salon: Beyond the Capital of Average

​Every November the Canadian Urban Institute holds its summit in Ottawa, and the room spends two days on the problems it had already agreed were urgent in 2024. The people speaking haven't really changed, and the places they're leaders for haven't either. It's a classic Canadian navel gaze, part back patting, part restatement of the thesis.

​Challenger Cities is a different room taking place in the same week. Downstairs at Brigid's Well, the basement Irish pub below a church. We'll have a proper conversation fuelled by Guinness poured as well as it is in Ireland.

​Our provocation? 'Best practice' is what keeps Canada average, and average on a delay. Ottawa shows it worst, because the city performs for a political crowd from away as much as for the people who live here, in a culture where 'risk' is a dirty word.

​Ottawa is a symbol. If the capital can't be a Challenger City, it's hard to argue anywhere else in the country can be. So the evening is about Ottawa for the people who call it home and for the people who come to town, and what that would mean for Canada.

​We want to ask:

​What exists here for the people who live in the city on a dark Tuesday night in February? And what exists for the people who arrive by train or aeroplane?

​Then we want to get to ideas that can be tried, in Ottawa, and across the country, that actually embrace risk, have rewards, and make Canada act like the Challenger that the country is telling itself and others it should be.

​We kick off at 6pm. If you're in town for CUI, come for something different. If you live in Ottawa, you are especially wanted.