Overview

The chicken breast packets in my supermarket in Amsterdam bear a photograph of the Swedish farmer who rears the birds. He is leaning on the wooden fence of an attractive-looking farm. Behind him are blue sky and green trees. The label recounts a little story about the town where the farmer lives. Before you ask: No, they don t show a picture of the ex-chicken itself but I m nonetheless intrigued. What s going on here why am I being provided with this background information? It s a packet of chicken, not a package holiday. My questions contain their own answer. The farmer s locality has become as much a product as the chicken s leg. The legs of dead chickens look and taste pretty much the same, and it s a challenge to make each one look attractive and different. Human beings and places, on the other hand, are different from one another. Associate your product with nice people, and a nice place, and it should do well.

My chicken-in-a-context is an example of how the focus of both business and social innovation is shifting from locomotion sourcing things in poor places and shipping them to rich ones to locality. Authenticity, local context, and local production are increasingly desirable attributes in the things we buy and the services we use. Local sells, and for that reason is a powerful antidote to mobility expansion.

But design to enhance locality is easier said than done. Localities contain a lot of nature, for example, and nature is the result of millions...