Description
Concepts of cities keep innovating, after the Digital City, the Smart City, now comes the Virtual & Commercial City. What can a Blue Ocean Strategy approach tell us about the future of cities? A “Virtual City” could become a “real virtuality”.
When someone asks what is the most important in cities, I always answer “People”. Because without people you cannot have a city. My inspiring Professor at INSEAD, Hal Gregersen, recommends asking catalytic questions. What if… we could have cities with no people? Shocking!
People are expensive to cities: the more they are, the more infrastructures, natural resources and services are needed. According to the United Nations, by 2050, 68 percent of the global population will live in urban areas. Municipal governments face increasing pressure from citizens and businesses to improve urban service delivery performance.
Beyond central government funding, the primary revenue streams for municipal governments are service fees (public parking, toll roads, waste management, and building permits, among others), fines for violations, charges or taxes (on property owners as well as on income, sales, and other transactions such as hospitality charges and taxes on plastic bottles and bags, carbon from vehicles, and vacant land), and assets monetization such as land, buildings and properties.
In order to increase revenues cities could charge more, improve the number of transactions (service offerings or asset monetization), optimize collection rate (and minimize leakage) or introduce new revenue streams.
Cities need people to generate revenues to create infrastructures so as to welcome more people. This virtuous circle has its limits though: most of the cities are now struggling financially. These conditions are unfavorable, and they work against cities whatever their resources and capabilities are.
For some cities they could adopt a reconstructionist approach and build a strategy that will reshape the concept of a city and what is taken for granted to manage and govern an urban environment. Instead of letting the urban environment defining the strategy of future cities, we could design an urban strategy that defines the urban environment.
What if… we could increase the number of citizens in the city and decrease the number of its residents?
What if… a city could create greater value to its citizens while decreasing its costs of governance and management, and increasing its profit formula by introducing new revenue streams?
Tallinn, in Estonia, launched in 2014 the concept of “e-Residency”. In 2019 Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, developed further the concept of e-Residency and is planning a “Virtual Commercial City”. More and more cities are thinking about adopting a “Virtual City” strategy.
To become a successful “Virtual City”, a city needs to redefine its value proposition, its profit proposition and its people proposition.
Based on a Blue Ocean Strategy approach, this book reviews how to design and implement a virtual and commercial city.
This book is not yet published.
