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People started moving into cities just as soon as they became available. The original early adopters were in the Middle East, along the Fertile Crescent some five or six thousand years ago. Think Ur. Obviously, urban structures go back further than that. Most famously Çatalhöyük, which dates back some nine or ten thousand years. Likely there are other proto-cities even older than Çatalhöyük which have yet to be discovered. Those old cities solved certain problems. They reduced the costs associated with survival. That is, it took less energy from each person, but the sum of that energy (I'm an engineer; energy = work) produced more in the urban environment than it did wandering around the savanna. For example, permanent housing can be built in a city, as opposed to temporary housing that has to be created at every stop in the hunter-gatherer life. We have a word for this: infrastructure. Cities have infrastructure that makes life easier. There are other reasons for the existence of cities, but this is a big one. People! Lots of people! Another big advantage of cities over life without cities, is the reduced cost of transactions. It is so much easier to exchange a haunch of meat to the guy living next door for a handful of chipped arrowheads than it is to carry that meat many miles, risking that it will go bad before you can find the right kind of customer. The density of cities is what made this possible through increased connections to other people. Density means having a lot of people in a small area. This is convenient for economic activities as well as social activities. Density plays an important role in the creation of connection. With densities ranging from a piddling thousand per square kilometer to tens of thousands per square kilometer (not uncommon in India), cities provide us with lots of people surrounding us. The more people surrounding us, the more chances we have to develop a connection with someone. Connections are important. Connections lead us to opportunities and opportunities are the source of wealth. Cities dominate economically So, cities as cities are important to our economic development. There are no rich countries without cities. Jane Jacobs writes that cities are the economic armatures of nations. One can argue that without rural areas somewhere, people in cities starve, but when we look at a map of the value of economic activities by area, it's quite clear that cities completely dominate the economic landscape. The best part is that cities really do cost less to build than they are worth—an example increasing returns to scale. We still do not know what the upper limit on city size is. The Tokyo-Yokohama conurbation is currently well over 30 million people (the New York City Metropolitan Area is number two with a bit less than 18 million). With increased density due to taller buildings, it will continue to grow. One can make a pretty decent argument that we are headed toward a future with a number of huge cities, giant conurbations like Tokyo-Yokohama or New York City or the I-5 corridor through the western US (a city form pioneered by the ancient Egyptians over four thousand years ago) or the Northeast Corridor--extending from Boston to Washington DC or London-Birmingham-Manchester or Mumbai-Surat-Ahmedabad. We can see these places and others clearly at night. Take a look at NASA's picture of the earth at night:
Cities are people In his excellent book, "Triumph of the City" Dr. Edward Glaeser makes the point that cities are not simply advantageous locations or useful infrastructure or even governments. Cities are people. Without people, we just have abandoned buildings. It is people that make cities work; lots of people in a small area; lots of different people with lots of different skills. This is a fundamental truth; keep it in mind. Maslow I need to digress a bit here and talk about Abraham Maslow, a psychologist who taught at Brandeis, Brooklyn College, The New School, and Columbia. Much of his career Maslow concentrated on research in the field we now call industrial psychology. He was the first to investigate what mental health, as opposed to mental illness, looked like. His focus was on humanistic psychology. This is the same Maslow who created Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (the book to read is “Maslow on Management”). I think most of us remember that from college. This is another key point. Healthy people need certain things. We can argue about the order of them to some extent, but that we human beings have needs and rank order them in importance is beyond dispute. Workers and the hierarchy of needs Generally the list of Maslow's needs runs physiological, safety, social, esteem, self-actualization. We all have to have our physiological needs fulfilled, or we die. Meeting those needs only partially, leads to stress which leads to disease and possibly to death. Safety is much the same. All of us need to be safe in our homes, while at work, and at play, to say nothing of our financial security and our health. We can run through the entire list, but the payoff is really at self-actualization. This is where people function at their peak. To function here, to work at a stable peak requires that the other levels be fulfilled, at least to a significant degree. Workers who are self-actualized tend to be creative, responsive, and technically accomplished. Alternatively, workers who are in fear of the financial consequences of being laid off, for example, don't function at the peak of self-actualization and companies pay a price for that. Same if workers are ill or malnourished. Maslow also pointed out that psychologically healthy people will react negatively if they feel they are being exploited or abused. If your workers make you angry, you might want to give some consideration to how you manage them. Or not. I find it interesting how we in management have the power to create whatever kind of workforce we want, but so few of us have actual demonstrable skills in organizational development. This is an overlooked area of study. Government's role Here in the US, an aerotropolis is part of a metropolitan area. That metropolitan area has a government. That government has the duty to work in the best interests of all of us who live in there. I understand there have been some departures from the theoretical ideal, but that is not my point. Our aerotropolis is a city, or part of a larger city with an established government by and for the people. All of the people. Including those who work in the factories, sorting facilities, warehouses, and offices surrounding the airport, i.e., within the aerotropolis itself. The government has a responsibility to look after all of us, not just those at the top of the socio-economic pyramid. If they demonstrate they won't, we should vote them out and vote in people who will. Every one of us, no matter how humble our origins or our present job deserves the opportunity to better ourselves economically, and we can't do that if the people in our government don't do their jobs. Systems of ethics If we look at Jane Jacobs' book “Systems of Survival” we see a significant difference in the ethical systems of those who are in government, what Ms. Jacobs called the “Guardians” and those who are in business. There are profound conflicts between these two ethical systems and we as designers of aerotropoli must keep this in mind. Business is not government and government is not business. They really are different. To my point, there are fundamental differences in motivation. People involved in the government are responsible for the well-being of the community as a whole; this is what they are rewarded for. Those involved in the various businesses that roost in our aerotropoli are responsible for the economic well-being of their company, and they are rewarded for that, usually very well rewarded. There is a fundamental tension here. The more a company can externalize their costs onto the surrounding community, the more money they will take away. Conversely, excessive taxation and regulation of companies keeps them away. One of the more challenging jobs in government is finding a balance that works for everyone. And that really is their job. Government and the workforce Excellent workforces do not spring forth unbidden from the soil like some wild crop. They must be nourished, educated, housed, transported safely, protected from crime, provided with health care and a healthy environment as well as cared for during old age. These fundamental services are the responsibilities of government. I know, there are corporate options for every one of the items I listed, but really, government can handle these basic services more efficiently than the private sector. For those who feel otherwise, please take a look at the cost record of contractors in the most recent Iraq war and compare it to their effectiveness on the ground. Take a look at the record of our banking industry over the past decade. Advocates for the working classes are not in corporations. They are in government. Good government should protect workers as well as corporate senior management. Part of every worker's hierarchy of needs is met by government, after all. Government is partially responsible for the circumstances surrounding a great workforce. We need a solid government in place to nurture our highly productive workers. A great workforce is a big draw for companies looking for a location in a country with a developed economy, and government has a significant role to play in the production and maintenance of that workforce. Aerotropolis: the book Going back to the idea of aerotropolis, I have to recommend Dr. Kasarda's book, "Aerotropolis." It is actually written by journalist Greg Lindsay in a clean, accessible style. I found my copy on Amazon. For those who work in this field, it is a truly important text, not so much because the ideas outlined in it are new to you, but you need to understand the history of how they were developed and how they are presented. I learned quite a lot. In the book, Lindsay and Kasarda show that businesses are the raison d'etre of an aerotropolis. Without various firms setting up headquarters, offices, warehouses, and factories in close proximity to the airport, growth is non-existent. This should not be surprising. The entire point of aerotropolis is business in a new, low-friction way. Speed is the essence. Speed in clearing customs; speed in getting permits; speed in building. Not cheap, necessarily, but fast. Speed is the new black, the new MBA, the new dot com, the new new thing. According to the current theory, the faster company will eat the slower company; size is no longer the most important characteristic. Over the past couple of decades, there has been an awful lot of talk about "nimbleness," which is just another way of talking about speed; so, maybe it's true. Improving the speed of business There are ways we can accelerate the speed of business around the airport. Many of the aerotropoli have master plans for development. All should. Let's look at that plan. Let's modularize some things, make a few upper limit assumptions, do the environmental studies ,and pre-approve buildings. We already have building codes. We already have PEs who sign off the building structure. Let's look at the rest of the approval process and give the developers the guidance needed to create a first-time through approval; let's aim at a 30 day approval, or get really aggressive and do it in five business days. We have the DER system in aviation; the building industry could do something similar. The point is that instead of taking about a decade to get something built, the smart people in government who plan and administer the aerotropolis should figure out how to drive that down to about six months. It can be done, and it can be done safely. It's just that very few are willing to face exactly what that takes: a complete overhaul of the current system. Again, where are my smart, effective people in government? We need them. The preferred workforce Along with speed, companies want and need a competent, intelligent, easily trainable, reasonably well educated work force that is highly adaptable, fast to hire, easy to lay off, and cheap (relatively speaking). This creates a tension with the workers who want to make a decent living, trading their labor for a paycheck. The business model of some companies collapse if they can't find really cheap labor. That's why they exported their factories to developing nations. For the workers there, even simple factory work that doesn't pay much by the standards of developed nations is a step up from starving in a disease-ridden cardboard slum, which is itself a gateway to connection and opportunities from the crushing wasteland of rural poverty. On the other hand, the cost of living in the cities of the developed nations is high enough that developing nation wages are too low. Firms that locate in the aerotropoli of developed nations require a more productive worker, one with both hard skills and soft skills, to balance the value of their work with the cost of their labor; they need peak performers, workers who are stably self-actualized, people who can create, respond efficiently and intelligently to new situations, and create value. The ugly truth of the matter Let us talk about the nitty gritty for a bit. We live in an era of no long-term commitments. If a company sees Hong Kong as a better place next year, they will go to Hong Kong next year and they will not be taking their workers with them, regardless of how wonderful they are. In the longer term, firms around the aerotropolis are ephemeral. Here this year, gone two years from now. They are not lifetime employers. That is the current trend and will be for the foreseeable future. It's past time we recognized the reality of it and addressed it constructively. Citizens of our city who work for these firms are looking at a career of serial unemployment. If we had really smart people in government, we could constructively and cost-effectively address this issue. There are ways to properly support our workforces without bankrupting anyone. Other countries have done it. Perhaps the US can, too (I can remember when the US used to be the leader in this area). Making the necessary changes is going to be difficult as there are entrenched interests who like the way things are currently structured. Someone is going to have to pay for it, but let's let those who are benefiting from the current situation pay for it, not those who are being victimized. This is only fair. We need exceptional people in government to find a way to do this gracefully. Virtuous cycle We all need one another. Businesses need cities with workers and government in order to make money safely and efficiently. Government needs citizens as workers for business and businesses as employers of citizens. Workers need businesses as employers and government to provide services and infrastructure. We are caught up in a virtuous cycle, or we can be. Terry Drinkard is currently consulting on an aviation start-up. His interests and desire are being involved in cool developments around airplanes and in the aviation industry. Usually working as a contract heavy structures engineer, he has held positions with Boeing and Gulfstream Aerospace and has years of experience in the MRO world. Terry’s areas of specialty are aircraft design, development, manufacturing, maintenance, and modification; lean manufacturing; Six-sigma; worker-directed teams; project management; organization development and start-ups. Terry welcomes your comments, questions or feedback. You may contact him via terry.drinkard@blueskynews.aero Other recent articles by Terry Drinkard:
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