We met at a historic resort in St. Andrew’s, in the fading light of autumn, just after Barack Obama’s impossible victory in the U.S. presidential election. That weekend by the sea felt like a time when we could suspend cynicism, and embrace citizenship.

How fitting that the inaugural 21 Inc. Ideas Conference was run by an energetic Fredericton native, young enough to “imagine” what Tennyson called “a better world.” So when we asked Tim Coates to look back, he looked forward instead to an unpublished book.

In this companion Ideas Issue, Coates tells us about Sean Safford’s Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown. Built on steel, the Ohio town (pop. 73,000) couldn’t save itself because the old elites couldn’t get out of the way of progress. Couldn’t reach across class barriers, open arms to new people or their minds to new ideas. Could only bicker while the old order collapsed around them like a Ponzi scheme revealed.

Safford’s second city, Allentown, Penn. (pop. 108,000), met the challenge of the Vulcan greeting by living long enough to prosper, by uniting its citizens and designing its collective future.

Coates tells the story more fully in his essay; please follow the thread of his argument. It takes us to a place (this place) where people are hard-wired by hard history to stand together in the name of progress. Ours is a place, Coates suggests, where community and region can come together to build success. Ours is a place where Father Moses Coady invented a co-operative movement, based on a broader idea of prosperity, that went global. Ours is a place where Father Des McGrath, Coady’s spiritual successor in Newfoundland, rescued coastal communities from the centuries-old clutches of the fish barons.

Danny Graham, a former politician who spoke at St. Andrews about civic engagement, understands this story well. When he was still active in politics, Graham once mused aloud about sharing wealth from offshore oil and gas royalties among the four Atlantic provinces. For this gesture, he was laughed off the stage by the same sort of elites that doomed Youngstown to its dismal fate.

The descendants of leaders like Coady and Graham are Tim Coates and the dozens of others who helped run and energize the conference. They are part of the swelling tide of the “we” generation.

The “me” generation that came before it, driven by a quest for personal wealth, was put in the chronic-care ward by the fall of Enron. It died with the collapse of stock markets and the world economy. And President Obama delivered a bitter, satisfying eulogy over its grave in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, on a cool crisp day in Washington.

That is President Obama’s message, and it reaches across the border just as surely as it reaches across the world. You can catch its spirit in the two teenage girls walking down any main street today just after school, sharing an iPod and a life. The song they are listening to, on ear buds made in China, was recorded in New York by a hand drummer from Mali and a guitarist from Moose Jaw. Both girls came of age in the place called this planet, but they aren’t busy knocking down borders or speaking across state lines. Because for them, borders don’t exist.

People like Rachel Derrah get this. When she writes about urban design, she doesn’t limit herself to the Historic Properties in Halifax or the cobblestones of old Quebec City. Instead she takes us to Camden Town, to the public squares of crowded Mexico City and watery Venice. These are not Potemkin heritage villages set aside for tourists, but places where citizens have gathered for centuries.

Yes, she says, you must design places for people.

I was reminded of two blessed weeks we spent wandering the streets of Prague in a springtime, moving in a dream between the Old Town Square, the fabulous, 14th-century Charles Bridge across the Voltova, and Frank Gehry’s intertwined towers overlooking the river. In tourist literature, Gehry’s intimate masterpiece is called “the dancing building.” The people of Prague refer to it, whimsically, as “Fred and Ginger.”

And as we danced in Prague, so we danced in St. Andrews. Sure, the tune was often a joyful noise rather than a perfect melody, but we all still sang along at the festival of ideas. Progress captures some of that spirit in this issue, imagining a joyful future based on what some might call our “better history.”

Please, join in the dance. After all, it is ours.