A City's Hidden Assets
Working with what we've got
Every city has hidden assets.
Things - sometimes hiding in plain sight - that have many uses.
Last month in London I went to an evening concert at the Vauxhall Farm cafe. The cafe is run by a charity that maintains city farms in dense neighborhoods. Everyone took their shoes off, sat cross-legged on the floor and listened to a cellist play a Hungarian love song while ducks slept in the pond outside.
Sofar Sounds is an entertainment company throwing pop-up concerts in unconventional venues around the city. You sign up for a neighborhood and get the location a day in advance. It’s a little adventure. I remember hearing about a barbershop moonlighting as a salsa dance studio when I lived in Brooklyn. It feels like you are playing peek-a-boo with your city when you walk past events like this.
I’ve been interested lately in business models that leverage a city’s hidden assets.
These Hidden Asset Businesses keep neighborhoods vital because they weave in and diversify services by working with what’s there. They are usually going to deliver services at a lower cost than building up new infrastructure, while maintaining local character.
Are 50,000 motorcycle taxis in Nairobi key to improving the health of the city?
My old home Nairobi has hidden assets too.
I’ve talked recently about how motorcycle taxis (called boda bodas) are a part of the character of Nairobi, and how they play a bunch of roles. Roles like fueling a booming delivery industry in a country with no public mail delivery service.
Boda bodas are a staple of Nairobi’s transit system because they don’t cost a lot of money, and they get through the notorious traffic.
They continue to grow in popularity, with prominent tech start-ups catching on and building (mostly) delivery and hail-a-ride apps leveraging the huge existing network of bodas.
Boda riders average two hours each day where they are sitting on roadside corners waiting for the next job. That’s 100,000 hours in Nairobi alone.
That’s a hidden asset.
But first, a quick detour.
Urgent care is a big problem in Nairobi. Traffic is horrible, meaning it takes a while to get help. Ambulances are privatized, and most people can’t afford them. There are accidents every day on these crowded, potholed streets.
But urgent care is about more than just traffic accidents. Like everywhere, Nairobi has its share of heart attacks, dog bites, scrapes and bumps. So how do you get healthcare to people promptly?
According to Helpfie, one startup I’m excited about in Kenya, you train thousands of boda boda riders and give them first aid kits. Training covers a range of first aid from CPR to burn treatments, and Helpfie also has a slick app guiding riders through emergency medicine protocols.
Now when those riders are sitting on corners waiting for the next job, they are watching and guarding our streets. Every time you see their reflector vests and fanny packs, it brings a little sense of safety and community.
For a low investment, Nairobi has thousands of potential heroes that are trained, equipped, and ready to help. Investing in healthcare shouldn't just be about the new hospital set to serve 1% of the population.
Imagine turning on a city-wide network of 50k first responders instantly.
This is an obvious win for the city.
The more I think about a city’s hidden assets, the more I see examples of creative policies and entrepreneurs.
Take Sook, in London. The UK has more than 80,000 empty shops, increasing at a rate of ~28 per day (2022 data). Yet, there is demand for physical retail space.
Sook’s platform matches supply and demand with a rent-by-the hour model paired with nimble, high-tech store infrastructure making it easy for one shop to be multiple things during the day. A pilates studio in the morning, a pop-up show for a fashion student in the afternoon, and a known retail brand catching after-work shoppers in the evening.
Across the world, China is looking at a different type of empty infrastructure. I was delighted to learn that at least some of the tens of thousands of underused covid testing centers are being repurposed as food stalls and micro-libraries.
Every city has hidden resources we could use to solve big problems. How do we find more? A first step is noticing underused assets.
Anyone else seeing cool ideas in their city or while traveling?
Reply in the comments or to this email if so!
Melissa
Links and Thanks
Helpfie in Nairobi does awesome work making the city safer.
Sook in London is upping the diversity of retail experiences through pay by the hour pop-up spaces.
Local governments in China find new uses for testing booths.
This is so cool! I LOVE Sofar sounds and these other direct-to-consumer kind of initiatives. It seems like with tech, we can help to organize and better utilize these hidden assets to serve our city's liminal needs!