'DUNDEE? Intelligent? They're having you on in the office, son." The group of women heading out to see Willie Nelson at the Caird Hall are not convinced. I've just told that them that I'm visiting their city because it may be about to be named the wo
rld's most intelligent community. A New York think-tank bestows the title on a different place each year, and Dundee is the only British city in contention. It is up against Seoul, Tallinn, three areas of the United States, and Fredericton, in Canada. The winner will be announced on Friday.
The great and the good of Dundee are excited about the nomination. On this chilly Wednesday evening, however, the ordinary folk do not seem to feel that the accolade reflects reality.
For a long time, Dundee has been a national joke. Not far enough north to be considered romantic, too far away from Glasgow and Edinburgh to be regarded as significant, the home of Oor Wullie and The Broons was dismissed by central belters as petty, parochial and past its best. That may all be patronising rubbish, but it remains how a lot of Scots feel about Dundee. The shocking thing is that it seems to include every Dundonian I stop and ask.
In Halley's Bar, high on the Hilltown, a steep street near Dens Park and Tannadice, the barmaid puffs out her cheeks incredulously. "Science and all that is fine down in the town, but none of the money's coming up here." By the big statue of Desperate Dan outside the Overgate shopping centre, a dapper gent of 71 says: "I'm intelligent, but I formed the opinion long ago that the human race is not one species but a series of sub-species." He tuts in the direction of a drunk young woman shouting at her boyfriend. "See? The language these people use."
Over in the University of Dundee, the mood is much more upbeat. The Sir James Black Centre forms part of the university's "citadel of science". In a lab on the third floor, young scientists squeeze past a television news crew. Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish Government minister in charge of education, has come to tour the site of what will become a new £10m institute dedicated to cell-signalling, an area of research which could one day yield cancer-treatment drugs. Her guide is one of the world's most eminent scientists, Professor Sir Philip Cohen. The event is essentially a stage-managed feelgood story about Dundee, reinforcing the relatively new idea that this is a place where genius flourishes and money can be earned and spent. Thanks to the closure of the Timex factory, and more recent job losses at NCR, Dundee has been more associated with high unemployment and low morale.
Having bade farewell to Hyslop, Sir Philip sits behind his glass desk and reflects on the changing fortunes of the city which has been his home for almost 40 years. In 1971, aged 26, he began working as a lecturer in the biochemistry department, which at that time was based in a converted stable. At that point there were fewer than 40 people working in life sciences in Dundee. Now the sector employs 4,000 people in the city, 6% of the workforce, and is expected to continue to grow by up to 10% a year.
Dundee is the third most successful city in the UK in terms of the number of biotech companies it houses, behind Cambridge and Oxford, and that has changed the way the city looks. Once a byword for hideous Sixties architecture, Dundee is now home to clusters of space-age buildings in which thousands of scientists work away on projects which surpass mortal understanding but are often geared towards treating cancers and diabetes. The Technopole, a site in which a number of biotech companies have premises, is overlooked by a 282ft chimney from a 19th-century textile mill, juxtaposing the old Dundee with the new.
"When we raised the money to construct our last building, our campaign was fronted by the actor Brian Cox," Sir Philip says. "Dundee markets itself as the 'City of Discovery' but Brian said to me, 'No, Dundee is not the city of discovery, it is the city of survival. Whenever people have said, Dundee was down and out and finished, it has always reinvented itself.'" Sir Philip laughs and says: "I personally think it is the city of survival and discovery."
Dundee's changing fortunes have been driven, in part, by the flourishing of sciences at the university, which has led, in turn, to several commercial businesses being set up by former staff. One in seven Dundee residents is a student and this has attracted global pharmaceutical firms keen to recruit smart graduates. However, what seems to be really driving change is that a number of disparate groups – the council, universities, arts scene and the companies that develop video games – all share a vision of Dundee as a rich city, both financially and in terms of the quality of life. As Dundee is so small, these people meet each other all the time, often in the bar of DCA, the arts centre designed by Scottish architect Richard Murphy.
DCA director Clive Gillman is aware of this role and tries to encourage these crossovers, for instance by programming films, such as La Jetée – a Sixties vision of post-apoclypse Paris – intended to inspire Dundee's video game creators, or by showing art created in association with the nearby Scottish Crop Research Institute, based on patterns made by the genomes of potato pathogens. However, perhaps just as importantly, DCA is simply a good place in which to eat, drink and talk, and is therefore part of the pleasurable lifestyle bringing talent to Dundee and keeping it contentedly there.
Dr Tom Shepherd, the chief executive of CXR Biosciences, a company involved in developing new methods of making sure drugs are safe, was living in Paris and heading a French biotech company when he was offered his present job. "I was born and raised in Glasgow and had never been here," he says. "So when the guys phoned me up about this company, my first reaction was, 'Dundee!'" He gives a look of horror. "I had the view that it was a smaller, tackier version of what Glasgow used to be – dirty, troubled and economically depressed."
Shepherd, 53, and his French partner agreed to visit Dundee and see what it was like. They arrived on a Friday night, went for a sceptical stroll and were amazed to see that DCA was showing a season of French films. Clearly, Dundee was a much more outward-looking place than its reputation suggested. That was six years ago, and Shepherd has no regrets about swapping the Seine for the Tay.
Immigration has caused Dundee to become a more cosmopolitan place; there are 56 nationalities among the 760 staff in the life sciences department of Dundee University, and that pattern is repeated all over the city. Oke Oluwafemi, a Nigerian who runs an African grocery shop on the Hilltown, is one of 3,000 Africans living in the city and surrounding area. When he first arrived, seven years ago, people warned him about racism, but as there are now so many foreigners he says there is no problem at all. Next to Oluwafemi's store, there is a Polish deli. Down the hill on West Marketgait, Realtime Worlds, Dundee's biggest video development company, has around 200 employees. Standing in reception, I hear all kinds of accents – French, Italian, what sounds like Russian.
Realtime Worlds is symbolic of the shift in Dundee from heavy industry to a knowledge economy. It's based in an old jute mill dating from 1881. One of the programmers, Mike Dailly, tells me that his grandmother used to work there.
At only 38, Dailly has been in the video games industry for 20 years. He was the first employee of DMA Design, the company founded in the mid-Eighties by David Jones, a computer enthusiast who, in what can now be seen as a symbolic decision, used his redundancy money from Timex to buy an Amiga 1000 on which he started to program games. DMA went on to create the hugely popular game Lemmings and then the global cultural phenomenon that is Grand Theft Auto.
Following various buy-outs, DMA became Rockstar North, now based in Edinburgh. Jones now runs Realtime Worlds, which recently attracted $50m in investments. His creative and commercial success has caused Dundee to become home to a cluster of developers, many set up by former DMA and Realtime staff, others founded by graduates of the video game courses run by the University of Abertay. Grand Theft Auto coming out of Dundee has had the same consequence as The Beatles emerging from Liverpool – hundreds of ambitious young men (80% of this sector are male) swarming into the city, determined to become the next big thing.
Civic leaders such as Joe Morrow, depute leader of the city council, have a very clear idea of what Dundee should and should not be. A portly man in burgundy braces and big black brogues who works as an Episcopal priest, he is an evangelist for the city, keen to spread its good news. He talks with a jovial disregard for grammar about "wealthing up" Dundee.
"For five years I've been trying to change the city's economy so that it no longer looks back to jute, jam and journalism," he says. "It's absolutely key that we are recognised outside our own city as world leaders in new areas such as digital media. I can understand why people would want to have a joke about Dundee's intelligence, but I'm dead serious about this city's transformation."
Morrow has hired a firm of international image consultants, Klein O'Rorke, to update the City of Discovery branding in order to get the message across that what he calls "the new Dundee" has moved on from its industrial past. He cares deeply about how the rest of the country perceives the city, and would love to provoke admiration rather than scorn. A triumph in New York this week would help. The truth, though, is that his first and greatest hurdle may be to convince his own citizens of their home town's virtues. Dundee? Intelligent? When Dundonians stop laughing, maybe the rest of Scotland will give the city the respect it deserves.
Unlikely Dundee claims to fame• Elephants: Dundee was the venue for the first dissection of an elephant. On April 27, 1706, a circus elephant died just outside the city and was dissected by a local surgeon, Patrick Blair.
• Oscars: Dundee United is the only professional football team in the world to be captained by an Oscar-winner. Neil Paterson, captain in the 1930s, won his Academy Award for the screenplay for the 1959 classic, Room At The Top.
• Gravity: In the early 1980s, Dundee toolmaker Sandy Kidd invented an anti-gravity propulsion machine that appeared to disprove Newtonian laws of motion. He had to move to Australia to find investors.
• Strong women: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, women held the economic upper hand because there was always work for them in the jute mills.
The full article contains 1900 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
