Community investments…

Tell me where you think this city is located.

“The roadside trash cans are covered with solar photovoltaic panels so they can light up at night; free electric buses connect different districts; the drainage wells for storm water are all embedded in the curbs. […] The pavement is laid with pervious sand bricks for efficient drainage, and the water supply is designed to minimize leakage. Rainwater and wastewater are collected separately, and 18 submersible axial flow pumps capable of pumping 42.1 cubic meters of water per second divert the rainwater to artificial wetlands.”

So in what country do you think this is? Germany? Japan?
I certainly can imagine it located in any one of these two countries. But this is Tianjin Eco-city, China’s first attempt at sustainable development. Only some 20,000 people have moved there, but the least you can say is that China takes their growing environmental problems serious. And admire their willingness to experiment and innovate; which is also why the city was featured in MIT’s Technology Review^[1]Yiting Sun, “A Chinese Urban Experiment,” MIT Technology Review, November 18, 2014.

There are a few other thoughts that come to mind. One is on China’s willingness to put some serious money into solving its problems; $6.5 billion, according to project officials. Yes, that is a big community investment. But huge societal problems are rarely solved by small initiatives, and targeted community investments can be very effective. To be effective, however, I believe that the community investment should promote innovation in search of the best solution. It fails if the spending supports a single centralized (or worse still: lobbied) solution. As research scientist Anthony Townsend puts it in the same MIT Technology Review^[2]Berg, Nate. “No Single Smart City Mold.” MIT Technology Review, November 18, 2014. MIT Technology Review:

“A city that’s taken over by computers designed by a big technology company is going to look like a machine. It’s going to be highly automated, highly centralized, and very efficient. It may not be a lot of fun, it may not be terribly respectful of our desire for privacy, it may not be very resilient. On the other hand, we could design cities that have a very decentralized, very redundant kind of infrastructure where the services that we create using sensors and displays and all these digital technologies are trying to achieve objectives that are more in line with increasing social interaction, increasing sustainable behaviors, reinforcing the development of culture, creativity, and wellness. So there are very different possible outcomes. It’s really up to the choices we make.”

Here is another thought that comes to mind. If Japan would have created this city, the solar panels may very well have come from China and stimulated China’s economy and industry. Even a decade ago that would have been different. The energy crisis in the 1970s had propelled photovoltaic development in Japan to the highest in the world. Stimulated by community investments, companies like Sharp, Sanyo Electric, Panasonic, and Kyocera became clear leaders in solar technology. But then Japan turned away from solar in favor of nuclear power^[3]Fairley, Peter. “Post-Fukushima, Japan Looks for a Solar Renewal.” MIT Technology Review, December 18, 2014. MIT Technology Review, 2014. Without the public support to fuel development, Japan’s industry lost its lead.

Germany’s public investments in solar might, today, lead to an economic stimulus for China as well. Like Japan, Germany was a forerunner in the fabrication of solar panels, but by 2010 China had taken over that position^[4]Forbes, 2013.

One of the aims of the DollarGame is to show the importance of a local community “ecosystem” where skills, knowledge and demand create a self-reinforcing loop of innovation. Bigger problems may just require the commitment from a larger community; perhaps even federal spending. My hope, in that case, is that the spending promotes decentralized solutions and competing innovation.

Sustainability, after all, implies resilience…