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Village 2.0?
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Village 2.0?

Richard Merrick's avatar
Richard Merrick
Nov 06, 2020
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Duffield Derbyshire. Photo: Duffield Community Association.

What if one of the long term results of the current pandemic, and the likelihood of further disruptive events in the future, is to make "things" more mobile than people?

As many more people work from home and those who need to be in a workplace are better being close to home, and we understand that we humans are the biggest vector for disease transmission what effect might that have thirty years out on how we live and work?

Over 50% of the world's population now lives in cities, and we know that historically cities are far more productive and innovative than less dense communities thanks to the inverse quarter power law. (here's a short Blinkist article that includes it). The driver of that productivity is connection, and historically connection meant population density. The London coffee shop effect of the eighteenth century.

Right now however, we're in the middle of a huge, unintended experiment. What if we can have connection …

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