It is not only a financial meltdown. And not even just a recession that is likely to be the longest and deepest since the big depression. It looks like it is a crisis of an entire model of production and consumption. It is a somehow structural, definitive crisis of an industrial model, of an entire approach to draft and sell “business propositions” and probably of a certain version of capitalism and democracy. And the crisis seems to be not any more about markets producing inequalities (which is already a big, historic problem) but about markets mechanisms not able any more to allocate resources to the most efficient ends: to the most dynamic industries within economy, to the most efficient firms within industries, to the most talented people within firms. The crisis seems to be definitive not just because we realized that capitalism has got nasty consequences, but because we discovered that it has long betrayed its own basic promise: salaries of managers and management consultants as well as market capitalization seem not to be able to reflect anymore the capability to generate value for clients, consumers, societies.
Even more dramatically, it is the very idea of innovation – the very sort of dramatic, disruptive change that the multiplication of information makes possible – that seems to conflict with the “intelligence” (meaning by that the ability to interpret reality) of giant banks and companies that increasingly look like dinosaurs before their extinction.
Crisis of industrial model, but also the twin crisis of democracy, traditional modes to collect individual preferences into collective choices. Because it was the combination of the two forces – fair competition amongst products and companies and people and fair competition amongst political parties, politicians and visions of the direction communities should pursue – that used to bend industries and banks, parliaments and governments towards the common good and, therefore, to make them – the economic and political agents – “legitimate”, acceptable by an enough large share of people.
But now the question is: where do we start from? How can we start the reconstruction? How can we improve the instruments that we have ?
Cities. Cities as the “place” where things increasingly happen, where most of problems are produced and where solutions can be more concretely identified and experimented. In hugely important industrial and public services domains like transportation, waste reduction and management, energy production and distribution, houses construction, maintenance and demolition; but also in vital mechanisms of participation – that go beyond the not sufficient any more elections – and of government of global issues.
Cities as the “place” that is progressively replacing the more abstract, Hegelian, romantic dimension of the State and of international organizations whose paradox - they are increasingly weak in a world which is in increasing demand of global institutions - is explained by their very being creature of the nation states that they should have replaced in many policy areas.
Smart cities in the post crisis era. Smart cities as the key to start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. To identify and develop the “value propositions” (the interconnected and, probably, foldable cars; the intelligent house; the internet energy; the post waste consumption models) that will probably be the innovations upon which entire industries will be redesigned and banks will have to reorganize their business models. Smart cities as the platform to experiment new ways to process individual choices into collective decisions and to renovate democracy.
It may work. It may be one of the intuitions upon which we may build the future. It is worthwhile to try anyway. Most of the certainties that we used to have are in their grave and we can not afford any more to have no option but to admire hopelessly the complexity that we are facing.