Talk Isn't Cheap.(World Trade Organization conferences)

Double Bay is one of Sydney's most charming and exclusive quarters. On the harbor's edge, circled by some of the city's finest homes, this shopping village is where you'll find high-end designer stores with large glass displays, rows of German sedans, and society matrons lunching along the boardwalk.

In other words, it's no place for the World Trade Organization to hold a meeting. That's because wherever the WTO goes these days, thousands of anti-globalization protesters usually follow. But that never occurred to Australian federal officials who chose the tony neighborhood--without consulting the local city hall--as the site for the WTO's "mini-ministerial," a gathering held last week for 25 trade ministers to discuss challenges to the organization's new trade round. When they learned of the plans, Sydney's city officials cried foul, reminding their federal counterparts of the more than $15 million worth of property damage that protesters caused two years ago at a World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne. The mayor demanded the meeting be moved to a more secure--and isolated--spot. "Everything [the protesters] dislike about the world sits in Double Bay," says a government adviser. "It could have been vastly expensive."

It was once an article of faith that mayors and city officials would go to any length to get their city named the site for an international meeting. Foreign delegations filled hotel rooms, dropped their currencies around town and generally added to a city's prestige. But since anti-globalization protesters trashed the streets of Seattle in 1999, the world has witnessed economic summits grab more headlines for the violence they provoke in city parks than the deals they ink in boardrooms. That has altered the economics of global meeting making. No longer are these foreign get-togethers a boon to a city's bottom line. Seattle ran up a bill of $20 million in property damage, and the price tags for Quebec City and Genoa in 2001 were $70 million and $100 million, respectively. Now you can almost hear city officials quietly praying that the world's financial institutions will land their next summit someplace else.

Last week Sydney's prayers went unanswered. Early estimates for security costs at the two-day conference are $2.5 million. And Sydney's officials believe they got lucky: police warnings, the threat of new terrorism, and the fact that Australians are still in mourning from the Bali bombings kept many protesters away. But officials still had to prepare for the worst, and fortifying a city is expensive. Sydney locked ...