Fragmented factoring part 1
-Or how urbanism and industry can reinvent itself.
The world’s megacities of today are big as small countries, hubs for business, creativity and social change. They have since long outgrown their hinterlands in terms of production and raw material.
Today the megacity is the motor for the global economy, the big end of the road for the supply chains of the world and at the same time, the start. The desires, wishes and decisions radiate out from these mountains of activity, across the barrens to production centers across the world.
The system is near perfection and at the same time under attack from forces out of its control. Weather changes, increased prices followed with social unrest makes, what looks like a nice set up on paper, an unstable colossus on clay feet.
What are the remedies for such a situation? It sounds daunting but human ingenuity has solved huge problems before.
The megacity is both the solution and the problem. Urban planners have since long proved that the city uses less energy per user than rural areas based on the simple principle of density.
By adding a lean production perspective on the mega city we can identify a lot of waste. Waste in production, transport, organization and management.
One perspective can be to view the city as one badly managed corporation. By looking at all the activities going on in the city we can identify synergies that aren’t exploited, gainshare concepts that are not used and capacities that are used to their max, as well as to their minimum. We see waste and missed business opportunities. Value lost.
