Today in my cross-cultural management class the professor mentioned offhand that Toulouse is ‘the Seattle of Europe’, and I had no idea what he meant by that. Maybe I would’ve had some clue if I’d ever been to Seattle, but alas that is one place in the US (and the only region of the US, actually) that I’ve yet to visit. I’d like to – Adam Young’s lyrical invitation would suffice, but I also know that Starbucks is from Seattle, and Starbucks is one of a few things that make me feel cool, ambitious, and full of potential. With these sentiments as a backdrop I naturally wanted to know what the professor meant by his statement, but like a 21st century university student I, rather than simply asking, resolved to Google it when I got home.
(Kids, whenever you find yourself resolving to Google something when you get home – or more likely, Googling it right then on your handy-dandy smartphones, while my dumbphone looks on exressionlessly – that you could actually ask someone, get your nose out of that screen and ask them. You need the practice.)
I have just Googled it now, and though the answer is proving recalcitrant, the search phrase ‘toulouse “the seattle of europe'” seems to have yielded some fruit. The top hit apparently ‘may harm my computer’, but seeing as only four results have appeared and two are about Norway, it’s tempting. The second hit is a thread about south France on a hot springs forum – how unexpected, and potentially gratifying on other counts than my current objective – in which the OP describes Toulouse as “a 2000 year-old city that still has plenty of buildings that are really ancient. It is also the Seattle of Europe, since that’s where Airbus is located. I did not go on a tour of the plant since I am a Boeing fan, especially since they located their new facility here in coastal South Carolina, and I might have slipped and said something and gotten ejected.” Nice aviation pun.
You might think ‘since that’s where Airbus is located’ is a fairly straightforward phrase, and perhaps to you it is, but it took me further Googling to fully flesh out this hot spring soaker’s meaning. As usual Google did not disappoint; in fact, I didn’t even have to click on a hit, so capable are their data-gathering bots these days.
Are you ready? Toulouse is not just host to an Airbus plant, it is the headquarters of Airbus. The headquarters of Boeing is in Chicago (gotcha!)…but only since 2001, before which it was in Seattle; in fact, Boeing was founded in Seattle. I suppose that excuses the seeming outdatedness of the expression, as presumably (read: if Wikipedia can in this instance be trusted, and I believe it can) Airbus, being only about forty years old as compared with Boeing’s near-century, was founded in Toulouse. Not to mention that Chicago is already known for plenty else, the esteemed deep-dish pizza among the foremost, and anyway ‘the Chicago of Europe’ sounds farcical. [If you have a comment on this last point, you may want to save it until you’ve read Part 2 as well.]
So there you have it. Rival airplane manufacturer – and it was only after coming to Toulouse that I learned how strong the rivalry is (and that classifications such as 737, 747, and 777 apply only to Boeing models; Airbus uses A320, A350, A380 and the like, and yes, I did learn that from an Airbus employee here) – homes make Toulouse ‘the Seattle of Europe’, and of course the European is named after the American, though in this case considering the corporate age difference I can’t really complain.
If you are satisfied with that explanation and in general enjoy resolution, read no further. I myself am not satisfied and intend to delve further, with no guarantees of ultimate resolution.
It’s probably just that part of me that screams, there’s always a deeper meaning! Everything is connected, everything can be explained! that is egging me on now as always. But you see, we weren’t talking about Airbus and Boeing in my cross-cultural management class. We weren’t talking about airplane manufacturing. I suppose we were talking about globalisation and, at that specific moment, tourism, which is connected to the decrease in flight prices, but our focus was people, I thought. Maybe my memory fails me. Someone said something, and it was in reply to this that the professor said, ‘Yes, well, they do call Toulouse the Seattle of Europe,’ but I can’t remember the comment that led to this reply. Still, bad memory or no, I can’t shake the lack of final-puzzle-piece-falling-into-place feeling from all I’ve said thus far. Perhaps the professor’s comment was truly offhand, as I flippantly wrote at the start. It’s those kinds of comments that drive people like me crazy.
Beyond that, I don’t find the existence of the factory or even headquarters of a rival in a duopoly adequate grounds to refer to one city by the name of another. The Airbus HQ is not the defining characteristic of Toulouse nor, I think I’m right in saying, its sole sustenance. As the aforementioned bathing traveler noted, it has over two thousand years of history, and even now, there is much tourism, shopping, and other commerce, not to mention my university-dominated immediate environs. And I’m sure there’s more I have yet to discover.
Okay, as I’m basically talking out of my- well, just talking, I suppose I should go looking for some sort of evidence. Google once again avails itself, and I find this very knowledgeable-sounding blog entry. I know blogs aren’t the most reliable of sources – after all, if I’d left the previous paragraph alone, you might’ve departed being disastrously misinformed! – but on this one I’m flying by the seat of my pants. Said blog informs us that in the US, “for every aerospace job there are 1.9 indirect jobs created and 1.5 induced jobs; thus one aerospace job creates 3.4 jobs.” Taking into account the 21,000 Airbus/EADS employees in Toulouse and its population of about 1.1 million (the figures are all probably a bit higher now), 9% of the metropolitan area population, or 25-30% of families here depend on this activity for a job. So it’s a little more essential than I thought.
That’s a lot of data you probably weren’t that interested in, but I think we can both agree it’s a lot better than me rambling about shopping and drunken student life. At the Toulouse Wikipedia page, which I should’ve visited far sooner than this, it says that Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of not only Airbus but also a major positioning system, a satellite system, the largest space centre in Europe (visit-worthy?) and several other satellite subsidiaries (it also calls the ‘world-renowned’ University of Toulouse “one of the oldest in Europe (founded in 1229) and, with more than 97,000 students, the third-largest university campus of France,” so, holla). This is all starting to make more sense. Now it’s Seattle’s turn.
I’ll spare you the nitty details of that search. I think it’s fair to say that Seattle, while perhaps not the centre of the American aerospace industry – other cities such as Wichita, Kansas, claim a share of it – is certainly a major centre, with Boeing, involved in both air and space, and defence, formerly and still at its heart. According to one website (not Wikipedia, in fact, though as this is not an academic paper I’m not refraining from citing that notorious fountain of knowledge), the Seattle metropolitan area has the highest concentration of aerospace industry jobs in the world.
This is all far more satisfying. Seattle is a centre of aerospace industry in America with Boeing at its core; Toulouse is a – and even the – centre of aerospace industry in Europe with Airbus at its core. So to call Toulouse ‘the Seattle of Europe’ is, I must say, fair enough.
(If you sensed a looming ‘but’ at the end of that sentence you are correct, but I shall save said looming butt for Part 2. You could head straight over there, or you could take a brief interlude to listen to some of what has formed my conception of Seattle.)
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