What Makes a City “Future-Ready”?
As urbanisation advances, major cities around the world face a range of challenges — including sustainable economic growth and demographic change. Those pressures do not arrive one at a time; they overlap and interact.
One strand of the future-ready picture is digital. A digital economy strategy described in the source material proposes to use a modern digital economy to drive Australia’s future prosperity, and it sets out to build a leading digital economy and society.
The Complexity Developers Are Working With
Overlapping economic and social pressures
The industry environment, economic development and social challenges that shape a city are interconnected and influence one another. Public-sector bodies working on these issues face the complexity that comes from that interaction rather than from any single problem in isolation.
The OECD’s framing is useful here: it describes a city with strong development resilience as one with sustainable development, wellbeing and comprehensive growth capacity — one that can absorb shocks, adapt to new situations, transform itself, and handle future shocks and pressures.
Shocks beyond the original design
Cities are increasingly seeing situations where the actual shock exceeds what was anticipated when the development was first designed. That makes it more necessary to predict future disaster threats accurately and to think ahead about what a city may face.
One documented example comes from Kashiwa Smart City. In March 2011, the month of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the design of Kashiwa Smart City was already under way. Development goals premised on the SDGs were set, an energy infrastructure plan was formulated, and work with private companies was advanced for future-oriented infrastructure.
Building Resilience Into the Plan, Not Just the Build
For anyone involved in urban development, the practical implication is that resilience has to be part of how a project is conceived, not an add-on after the fact. The Kashiwa example shows that even a project already in progress can be adjusted to strengthen disaster resilience when the need becomes clear.
Urban resilience, in the OECD’s terms, is about capability: absorbing a shock, adapting, transforming, and coping with what comes next.
Where Digital and Industrial Strategy Fit In
Digital capability is one strand of the future-ready picture. The digital economy strategy described above proposes to use a modern digital economy to drive Australia’s future prosperity, and it sets out to build a leading digital economy and society.
Industrial and supply chain design is another strand. One necessary step in industrial supply chains is developing multiple alternative supply sources; for critical processes, a “Plan A” should be paired with a “Plan B”.
The Chinese Embassy’s economic and commercial office in Australia has stated that it welcomes capable Chinese enterprises to invest and cooperate in Australia, and that it continues to support such cooperation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a future-ready city, in the OECD’s description?
The OECD describes a city with strong development resilience as one that has sustainable development, wellbeing and comprehensive growth capacity, and that can absorb shocks, adapt to new situations, transform itself, and respond to future shocks and pressures. This definition is about capability, not about a fixed set of features.
What challenges do major cities face as urbanisation continues?
Major cities around the world face challenges such as sustainable economic growth and demographic change. Beyond individual issues, the industry environment, economic development and social challenges that affect cities are interconnected and mutually influential, which creates complexity for the public bodies dealing with them.
Why does resilience matter for new urban development?
Because situations where a shock exceeds what the original design anticipated are becoming normalised. That makes it more necessary to predict future disaster threats accurately and to consider how a development will hold up over time. In the Kashiwa Smart City case, the design was already under way in March 2011, the month of the Great East Japan Earthquake; development goals premised on the SDGs were set, an energy infrastructure plan was formulated, and work with private companies was advanced for future-oriented infrastructure.
What does the digital economy strategy described in the source material set out to achieve?
The strategy proposes to use a modern digital economy to drive Australia’s future prosperity, and it sets out to build a leading digital economy and society. Digital capability is one element of the broader future-ready city picture, alongside economic, social and resilience considerations.