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Ryan Reynolds thinks the best cities have a streak of eccentricity, and he believes Abu Dhabi is building one. Speaking in the capital on Tuesday, the actor said universities, art and culture are what give a place its character, and that the emirate is getting that mix right.
Reynolds, the Hollywood actor, producer and Wrexham AFC co-owner, was speaking at the inaugural Livability and Investment Exhibition, running from September 29 to October 1 at ADNEC Centre Abu Dhabi. He was in conversation with Tyler Brûlé, Editorial Director and Chairman of Monocle, in a session titled Growth with Soul, on how cities can grow without losing what makes them special.
‘Abu Dhabi is doing it very, very well’
Reynolds drew on his experience in Wrexham, the Welsh city whose football club he bought with Rob Mac in 2021. The club’s current focus, he said, is the local university, because that’s where growth tends to begin.
“If you look at a lot of towns that grew exponentially, it started with the universities,” he said. “It started with, basically, college kids getting out of the university, living in a small town, and saying, oh, you know, the cost of living is pretty low. I want to stay here.”
What happens next is what interests him most.
“And then bringing an art scene there and culture. Abu Dhabi is doing it very, very well. You’re suddenly bringing that and you’re creating eccentricity as well.”
The case for a little eccentricity
Brûlé seized on the word straight away.
“I like your point about eccentricity,” he said, linking it to the fixation on perfection that Reynolds had criticised earlier in the session.
For Brûlé, the cities people fall for are rarely the most polished. He pointed to Tokyo, where much of the appeal lies not in its grand boulevards but in its narrow side streets, where everyone is squeezing past each other and not everything works perfectly.
He described the cities he loves as places with odd staircases and room for surprise. He also recalled being asked at a previous event how a city could manufacture serendipity.
“And it’s like, wow, you must be an engineer or something that you can create serendipity,” Brûlé said.
His warning for fast-growing cities was simple. “You cannot lose, I think, the authenticity of what the place has.”
Letting a place grow on its own terms
Brûlé noted that Abu Dhabi is known for setting clear targets, and asked Reynolds how he measures success in Wrexham.
Reynolds admitted the team began without a plan. It wanted to lift both the club and the community, but didn’t know how.
“By just listening, letting things happen organically, and just being curious about things, the community started to grow, and then they felt seen,” he said.
Visitors now travel to Wrexham from every US state, every Canadian province and countries around the world. Reynolds said the change has been profound for a former coal and steel town that had lost much of its industry.
Other communities are watching, he said. When a place invests in something its people are proud of, much of the rest follows.
“The rest kind of grows. It starts to take care of itself, and it’s a really beautiful thing.”
Curiosity first
Curiosity, Reynolds argued, is the starting point for understanding any community.
“When you’re curious about people, even those sort of inaccessible people, you can eventually break that down,” he said.
A familiar face in the capital
Reynolds’ ties to Abu Dhabi go back years. In 2024, he was named Yas Island Abu Dhabi’s Chief Island Officer and has since appeared in promotional campaigns for the destination. His 2019 Netflix action film 6 Underground was also shot on location in the emirate.
Asked at the end of the session whether politics might be his next move, Reynolds kept his answer short.
“I would like to stay married,” he said.
