Business Communities
needs of a self sustaining community is important – bringing in large out-of-town retailers is not the answer. It is about looking at how food, locally grown, made, baked or brewed can be integrated into the local economy, and how that creates jobs. Once upon a time Letchworth had the Letchworth Bacon Company, it had its own farms, reared its own animals, slaughtered them and made meat products and delivered them locally to butchers, pubs, mini-markets and grocers. I know because my father worked there and I used to go out on his rounds during the summer holidays.
As a side note, the local factories and businesses like Spirella all had their own social clubs – life was truly local and self-sustaining. From a simple economics perspective such eco-systems ensure money is fed back into local economies, whereas Morrison’s or Argos say take it out and send it somewhere else. The mantra that our supermarkets/ shops/retail stores create jobs though true, is, depressingly shallow and myopic.
Shareable civic space: Are they looking at the idea of the shareable civic space? Pioneered in San Francisco by Mayor Ed Lee, who initiated the The Sharing Economy Working Group, its purpose is to take a comprehensive look at the economic benefits, innovative companies and emerging policy issues around the growing ‘sharing economy’. This evolved into what is called the shareable city. Instead of pursuing strategies based on big taxpayer subsidies for big-capital projects managed by political and corporate elites, the San Francisco “shareable cities” vision aims at decentralised participation by ordinary citizens and
neighbourhood groups in conjunction with nimble, socially attuned start-up businesses.
The Open Society: Were the Heritage Foundation to look at the city of Naples that is now a hothouse of participatory democracy, bottom-up initiatives, and social innovation and talk to Mayor Luigi De Magistris, he would explain the open society which is designed to be inclusive and allows for vibrant economies and innovation to flourish. Or they could talk to the City of Linz, Austria who in 2010 completed a year- long study of an “Open Commons Region” for government. The findings of the study introduce a framework for open government, with the goal of creating a vibrant public- private ecosystem that includes public administration, corporations, arts communities, educational institutions, and citizens.
I wonder if Letchworth would be a better place if some of these practical, realistic, no-nonsense true life examples were put into practice?
We have the opportunity to transform our local communities, to deliver regenerative societies, we have the opportunity to be as inspirational and creative as the Cadbury’s, the Bernard-Shaw’s, and the Howard’s as they were in their day – but we have to do it for our time, and curate all the great examples which clearly show how we can create better towns and cities for our world – today. As Wassily Kandinsky said, ‘every work of art is a child of its time’.
Images courtesy of
Shutterstock.com
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