this idea popping up in conversations again, recently in a chats with francesca and also Joshua.
This is the notion that what’s “local” isn’t as local as perhaps it once was. Though the sphere of one’s immediately proximate local physical and social environment will always remain important, ones real sphere of autobiographic locality seems ever more clouded and possibly more relevant.
Even today, you’d be hard-pressed to pick somebody off the street of this city, for instance, who was born here. I just read that by 2030, another 1 million people will call this city Toronto home. But you should know that everyone (and more) of that incremental population will come by migration both from other parts of the country and abroad. Current Canadian citizens, and by extension I assume Torontonians, are having babies at less than the population replacement rate (as is the case in many first-world countries). And these numbers are also net of current residents who migrate away from this city in the years to come.
Not to mention the increasing number of interesting people I meet who travel sufficiently such that, effectively, they don’t actually live anywhere with any great predictability.
Anyway I think there’s something appealing about this idea of autobiographic locality. That just physically where you are now does not capture where you may have been before, where you may be tomorrow, or where most of your ties to family, friends or professional colleagues may lie.
autobiographically local. what does it mean for you?
or for many industries out there (you know who you are), the business angle: do you really think your local market of the future is really/only local?
earlier thoughts on this topic here and here
