Great cities are built on philanthropy.  And not just gifts for today:  planned gifts.  As gift planners, by instilling pride in your city through the development and promotion of the arts, sport, and cultural activities you can encourage citizens to make legacy gifts.

In the spring issue of The Wilson Quarterly, produced by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Joel Kotkin writes, “Cities are humanity’s greatest creation.  They represent the ultimate handiwork of our imagination as a species and testify to our ability to reshape the natural environment in profound and lasting ways.  Cities compress and unleash the creative urges of humanity.  They are the places that, over the course of five to seven millennia, have generated most of our art, religion, culture, commerce and technology.”

Originally, religious buildings were erected to create a sense of awe in a landscape, linking the city to divine forces in the world.  Today, cities attempt to recreate this through soaring skyscrapers and cultural structures meant to evoke a sense of civic pride or awe.

Historically, cities played the role of a safe refuge from the maurading lawlessness of the wilds.  When a city’s capacity to assure safety declines, city dwellers rove to a safer area.

However, sacredness and security alone cannot create great cities.  To support a large population for a long interval of time, significant wealth must be generated through an active economy.  According to Kotkin, in addition to priests, soldiers and bureaucrats, this economy must be driven by a population including artisans, merchants, and working people. Kotkin writes that to be successful today, “urban areas must resonate with the ancient fundamentals – they must be sacred, safe and busy.”

Today, residential development in downtown areas of cities helps to keep a city vital.  So does the role of acting as a center of culture and entertainment.   In addition to positioning themselves as style setters and hip or fashionable, urban cities are appealing to not only those who live there, but also tourists in an effort to draw on the enormous potential in the travel industry.  By offering unique shops, museums, galleries and restaurants great cities station themselves as cultural meccas, drawing the interest of both locals and tourists alike, helping to generate a healthy economy.  Governments must be careful, however, not to neglect education, health care and infrastructure.  Otherwise, a dichotomy may develop separating the privileged from the masses serving the elite’s needs.

A long term investment in the cultural and fiscal health of a city is necessary to avoid this.  By encouraging our donors to make planned gifts whether to a hospital, museum, art gallery or church, we are helping them to create a living city which will flourish both now and in the future.