CITIES: BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES
The planet’s population will exceed nine billion people by 2050. In 2030, 85% of the world’s population will live in developing countries. In 2022 India will surpass China in population, and in 2030 and will have a billion and a half. Africa’s population will skyrocket, with an increase of 270% until 2100. In 2030, most of the population (60%) will be concentrated in cities. Every day, almost 180,000 people are added to the urban population.
In this context of growth, the importance of cities in economic and social terms increase. If the nineteenth century was the century of empires and XX of States, the XXI will be the cities. The economy will primarily focus on cities. Consequently, companies must design their relationship with them and leverage their specific differentiation. The link between a company and «their» city will become more fertile and sophisticated.
The city should be managed as a complex system, a confluence of many different problems (mobility, energy, health, culture, etc.) whose solution will require a combination of public and private investment and lead to significant business opportunities. Existing cities, with «soul» but with deficiencies in infrastructure, should be modernized, and new cities, designed some from scratch, will have as main challenge the socialization of their inhabitants (they get, then, that «soul» of the historical cities) .
One of the main challenges of cities will be mobility. Private transport looks like impossible in the macro-cities of the planet; congestion and consequent loss of time of its inhabitants are unsustainable in economic and social terms. One solution is to increase public transport (which is already dominant in the main cities like Tokyo or London, among many others). And another, by the redistribution of services in cities: that citizens have all services in their own neighborhood, a short distance from their homes. We will evolve from cities with a single center to multipolar cities, with different poles where it is possible to live, work, shop and be entertained without having to move to the «center» of the city. Again, this will provide important business opportunities.
Migration to the cities usually involves an increase in their density (the influx of people is faster than the construction of housing and infrastructure), and increased competition for resources, which can affect an increased cost of living in them. This can lead to a cultural shift towards sharing: sharing rather than owning may prove not only to be cheaper, but may become for many of the inhabitants of large cities the only way to have the necessary resources. Thus, a city can be «read» as a large accumulation of underutilized assets: it is estimated, for example, that many of the cars in a city stand most of their time unused. This will require new infrastructure, both physical (schemes for sharing cars and bicycles, and workspaces, as co-working, for example), and digital (systems that streamline exchanges of all kinds of products and services of the “collaborative » economy).
The efficient management of a city understood as a complex system will require a predictive analysis of massive amounts of data. Information technologies must provide the tools and processes to «convert» these data into effective action. «Smart» cities will therefore primarily aim at increasing the quality of life of its citizens, taking into account the economic and social sustainability and strengthen their empowerment (its ability to intervene in decisions relevant to their city).
A key component of the «system» of a smart city will be the implementation of the technologies included in the so-called Internet of Things. Vast networks of sensors and actuators provide information in real time, to both citizens and city managers, thereby increasing the productivity of both groups. Optimizing the management of mobility, energy, water and other resources will be sought, as well as waste. And apart from the transversal services to the entire population, public services for special needs (elderly, disabled, children, tourists, etc.) they shall be protected. Services, all of which represent significant business opportunities for companies.
The foreseeable technological feasibility of autonomous cars (driverless cars) in the medium and long term will have a considerable impact on cities. The launching in the short-term (2016) of «semi-autonomous» car technology could result in the elimination of the distinction between public and private transport. It has been shown that the combination of sharing of vehicles (car sharing) or of paths (ride sharing) would enable better mobility in large cities, with a decrease of 80% of the cars in circulation. And fewer private cars would mean a reduction in maintenance costs of infrastructure and accidents. A critical component of this new mobility management data in real time, which will be facilitated by the deployment of IoT technologies. The digitized information is the «fuel» of the new mobility («information about mobility is 50% of mobility»): the car becomes an «accessory» smartphone.
Planning and management of cities will result from the combination of public and private capacities. A main objective of this coordination will be to create the conditions for the «assets» of the territory to be correctly mobilized: the entrepreneurs of the city, their restless inhabitants, are those that will develop new layers of services and boost its economy and culture. Cities will have to encourage their entrepreneurs through the provision of infrastructure and services. This will involve a change in the leadership model of cities: from detailed planning «from above» to a mobilization of citizens to increase their emotional commitment to the city (engagement). The city administration will become the mere facilitator for civil society who is the one to act decisively as the main protagonist.
The growing awareness in favour of the conservation of the environment and the fight against climate change will promote a more environmentally sustainable approach to the economy through production models based on proximity (km 0) and energy self-production and food self-sufficiency of cities (agricultural production in vertical farms), with the consequent emergence of new entrepreneurs and business initiatives. Cities will be a critical component in the path towards a circular economy.
From our project: Now is Next
