Inverting the City/Country Dynamic
At a recent session with the Gen Y group working on the ‘Future Melbourne’ project for the City of Melbourne I suggested that the group consider what the result might be if they could ‘invert’ the way the State of Victoria operates. What would you be likely to see if more of the functions of the city occured outside of the CBD and more of the functions of the country occured in the City?
In pushing them to think further than they originally did, I suggested that there is no reason why these monolithic edifices called office buildings would be used for temporary storage of workers. After all, I reasoned, the function of the CBD would be conducted elsewhere which means workers would begin to gain benefits from the broadband access now denied to them and the required management techniques that fostered remote working. One element of the CBD inverted to the country.
But what to do with the existing infrastructure? That of course is a no brainer – the city office blocks would become our farms. More predictable and controllable weather patterns and water use, we’d have Wheat growing on floors 3-9; Corn on 10-16 and Rice on 17-20. In the underground carpark right to the ground floor we’d run cattle and other stock. The methane captured would be used to power the 24 hours a day hydroponic lamps that grow the crops. There’d be a reduction in transport costs as local farm sites began popping up right where they are need – next to the actual population that needs to be fed. In Austraia with our relatively poor soils and ever increasing periods of drought we have a real boon in food production.
And think of what all that new city space could lead to in terms of community engagement projects. That’s not to mention the drop in stress levels as hundreds of thousands of work hours lost in traffic crawls to and from the city get converted into usable and highly productive time. And just think of the air quality in town! A case of the rural activity inverted to occur in the city.
It’s no pipe dream. Just one that requires some serious thinking.
The second annual fund raiser was held in late October and attended by almost 300 people. Marcus Barber offers a brief update: The Blackwood 8 commitee put together a great fund raiser on behalf of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Melbourne. With a delightful crowd warm up by Greg Champion of the ‘Coodabeen…
Read More >The slides used as part of Marcus Barber’s key note address to the Regional Produce Summit are now available via the link below Held at the Wangaratta Gateway Motel (and the first conference event staged in its very impressively redsigned function room) the conference brought together a range of speakers to discuss culinary tourism,…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will be kicking off proceedings at the 2008 Regional Produce Summit in Wangaratta on the 20th of October where he’ll detail some of the emerging issues likely to impact upon the tourism and food sector in the foreseeable future and suggest ways that businesses in the sector might be able to…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will both key note and act as Master of Ceremonies at the Lockhart Industrial symposium on the 9th of October, in Lockhart NSW. Marcus will discuss the clear business advantages that Eco Industrial parks provide to businesses, the way that symbiotic supply chains work to improve business resilience and the way…
Read More >Marcus Barber joined host Tim Cox and co-host, author and writer Andrew Peglar on the Conversation hour to muse about the types of futures one might expect to see in coming years. After Tim asked for clarification between a General, Theoretical and Strategic Futurist, Andrew kicked off with a question over the singularity. The…
Read More >Members of the Futures Foundation and the AFFA will be congregating in Pearl Beach in the coming weeks to consider the state of play in the Australian Futures community. Given the emerging challenges in Australia and around the world, the futures community requires just as much serious contemplation and forethought as does any one …
Read More >One of our many Nordic watchers, Are Thorsteinsson, has posted the Future Matters segment looking at the future of robotics, along with marking up full language captions in Danish. Although a couple of years old now, the early signs listed in this segment are only now coming into more mainstream focus Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber has contributed a chapter to Volume Five of the ‘Death and Anti-Death’ Anthology which has just been published by Ria University. With contributors including Aubrey de Grey and Kevin Kelly and edited by Dr. Charles Tandy, Volume Five in the series is dedicated to the memory of Loren Eiseley, the renowned…
Read More >One of the challenges for one aspect of the world is fuel and the price of fuel used for private transportation. I use the word ‘aspect’ quite deliberately because the ‘aspect of the world’ that seems to be making the most noise about rising fuel prices is by and large the ‘westernised’ world – that’s…
Read More >With the theme ‘Moving Forward, Supply Chains of the Future’, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will open the Australian Supply Chain and Logistics Conference in Brisbane in July on behalf of the Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia. Details for the conference can be found below. The focus on the future of supply chains…
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