As part of the 8th Europe Asia Young Leaders Forum, I was asked to present my thoughts on two questions:
- How do cities organize communal life and maintain social harmony?
- What can business contribute to these processes?
.. and I was given 15 minutes to do so.
The questions for me were ones that I regularly think about (particularly the first) as I walk through cities that I live in and travel through, but it was the first time that I had been challenged to put my thoughts into a single package.
At the heart of it, there are 5 major things that I thought cities needed to do well before they would find a “harmonious balance”:
- Good urban Planning
- Provide Economic opportunities
- Offer a suitable quality of life
- Safety and Security
- Environmental stability
How business fit into this wider picture is, and was, a bit more intangible to the presentation as I focused a lot on the role of the city, but in short, it is my belief that companies are being asked to play a stronger role in the development of community. That, beyond providing jobs and paying taxes, it is the firms who work hard to develop internal and external communities are far more likely to find themselve in balance as well.