Friday 22 May 2020

Resilience


Derby is the latest city to have become affected by mass redundancies, this time by Rolls Royce. Cities that have become reliant on a single company to provide jobs demonstrate the fragility of modern society. 

This made me wonder whether large factories would be better positioned between cities or large towns and drawing their workforce from a wider catchment area. The problem with that though is that this would lead to an increase in travel - and hence pollution - and it would only be a matter of time before new towns sprang up around such factories due to them acting as magnets for both housing and suppliers.


Making a more resilient society seems to be an intractable problem, but it does need addressing so we are better resourced to withstand shocks to the system, whether they be epidemiological, climate induced or economic.


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