Building Sustainable Cities

By 2050 the number of people living in cities will be almost doubled, from 3.6 billion in 2011 to over 6 billion. However, the urban areas of the world are already overcrowded, and particularly developing countries, suffer from lack of drinking water, electricity and other essential resources to support their populations, thus multiplying economies are fragile.

The problems created by rapid urbanization are among the most important challenges of our time. They also represent one of the greatest opportunities and responsibilities to the private sector.

The business relciona on how to shape sustainable cities, economically competitive future.

Many companies and investors assume that fixing cities is the responsibility of the government, and it is the government who should act. But governments around the world are trapped in financial systems, policies or both. They can not be invoked to single-handedly solve urbanization problems or design solutions, such as electrification of public transport efficient and reliable, which will drive economic growth.

Implementation of these solutions require large amounts of capital, managerial skill and exceptional significant alignment of interests, which are often scarce in halls, but abound in the private sector.

In surveys with municipal governments, planners, and entrepreneurs in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia are many different business strategies to meet the challenges posed by rapid urbanization and scarce resources.

Often focus on expanding supply and providing more water, more electricity, more roads, more vehicles. But more and more companies are discovering how to create and claim value, improving efficiency through contracting resources of energy performance, for example, and other strategies to overcome trade barriers, reduce waste and resources stretch.

The structure rests on three pillars: (i) new business models that generate profits by optimizing the use of resources, (ii) financial engineering that encourages investments in efficiency, and (iii) careful selection of markets.

Although the approach of any company depends on your abilities and goals that are entering the market, the major strategies provided are relevant both for obvious players, such as companies and infrastructure providers turbines, trains and other equipment, and for firms higher in sectors such as information technology, financial services and construction products.

Whatever the industry, strategic investments in resource efficiency projects, construction or reconstruction of cities, can generate value for companies in the long term, while enhancing the competitiveness of cities, its habitability and environmental performance grow.

Financial engineering

A company or an investor could target a set of resource management initiatives. Of these, water, electricity and transit porjetos deserve more attention.

Companies that have water to process food and materials, power for computers reliably and whose goods can get to market and employees can get to work quickly and efficiently are clearly ahead.

Likewise, citizens with access to water, whose children have light to read and study, and moving efficiently and affordably, has a base to thrive. All other services that a city provides competitive: functional housing, schools, hospitals, shops, police and fire departments, heating, cooling, waste management, and so on, depends on a reliable water, electricity and infrastructure traffic.

The opportunity Efficiency

To understand where the opportunity is, think about how the initiatives resource efficiency is measured both in financial and technological sophistication. The products and services that will require new cities, and provide investors and entrepreneurs what they need to optimize it all.

Offers a company can be positioned according to these characteristics in a "matrix of efficiency." Technological sophistication increases from left to right, while increasing sophistication financial upwards. Solutions of low-tech commodities, like shopping isolated in a single transaction between buyer and seller, which inhabit the lower left quadrant crecem less; sophisticated programs, such as the optimization of demand response electricity irião always dwell in the upper right corner.

The Matrix Efficiency

The matrix is ​​useful for determining the current strategic position of the company's products, services and investments, but it is more valuable to discern the paths profitable company. The new value can be created and captured by moving horizontally or vertically in any quadrant.

However, companies that change their business models and offerings for the upper right quadrant earn more and also will have the biggest impact on the resource needs of the burgeoning cities of the world. Often, this means that the coordinator role is to fund a service or something that individual players can not do on their own. It is in this quadrant that offers of a company are more differentiated, and may favor multiparty solutions, and is more likely to create value for all participants.

by Fatisa Imóveis