The Romans and the Spartans: A mixed Mipim 2010

Sitting on the terrace at the Villa Francia, I wonder – what to make of the 2010 vintage? Well, for one thing it has been the coldest Mipim I have been to for a long time. Anyone lounging on the seafront for long enough this week, even in the middle of the day, ended up shivering from the mini Mistral whipping in from the bay. Nevertheless, the sun has shone, wine has been drunk, and the annual lifting of the collective industry spirit has, on balance, been achieved. It could have been a lot worse.

I must say it’s tempting (if, yes, ok, lazy) to draw an analogy between the weather and the economic climate for the property industry. Like Cannes, the industry has just been through the severest of winters. And, like Cannes, it is just starting to emerge into a chilly but perceptible new season. Uncertain and tentative, but no less obvious for all that.

The numbers attending this year’s Mipim, the organisers tell us, are similar to last year, still way down on the mega booze-fests of old. And, as everyone here will tell you, that’s not a bad thing. The reduced size and increased seriousness (relatively) make it just about possible to get stuff done.

And while numbers are unchanged, the mood has, undoubtedly, got better. Last year was characterised by grim-faced determination to plough on – exemplified by the architect I met last night whose 2009 Mipim trip came in the middle of a redundancy process that involved a third of the firm’s workforce.

Last year’s painful spending decisions on whether to keep people employed or come to Cannes to fish for more work certainly focused the mind, and killed the mood. Pay for a stand, or keep one more employee in work, what’s it to be? Not fun.

But in 2010, the talk was of new work, new possibilities, and, particularly, the dusting down and reworking of boom-time schemes. The London stand was the hub for much of this, with project viability seeming tougher the further you strayed from Berkeley Square.

Unlike last year, the rays of light weren’t entirely coming from the public realm. The public sector was noticeably quieter, hounded by the MPs’ expenses scandal and the election into a fear of being caught on camera in the vicinity of a flute of fizzy white wine.

In contrast, the optimism was centred on the revival of the City and West End commercial markets, high value residential schemes, hotels and some other retail. Very little of it – the Olympics aside – publicly subsidised. In some quarters (whisper it) there was even talk of buildings actually being built, and contractors being sought.

But by and large the problem of funding remained. Consultants and architects are picking up fees, and there is talk of schemes making commercial sense once again, but the money men will have to step up before builders start feeling the benefit.

So nobody overdid the cheerfulness, and nobody claimed that good times are round the corner. Parties were, on the whole, small and inconspicuous and often replaced by intimate dinners and select gatherings.

That’s not to say that lakes of wine and beer weren’t drunk, and whole oceans of sea bass and scallops weren’t slaughtered in the service of entertaining. Let’s be honest: most sane people outside the property world would still regard Mipim as a pretty debased display of almost neo-Roman excess from people who, like investment bankers, refuse to realise how it feels not to be invited to the party.

Nonetheless, all the justifications – that it generates vital economic activity, that it aids the creation of fantastic new places and facilities, and even that it facilitates the regeneration of the most deprived areas – still stand.

So there you have it. A Mipim that was a little less extravagant, a little bit colder, a little more positive and probably a little bit littler than previous years. Job done, see you next year.