CorporateNature No 142
Cities come in different shapes and sizes. If global cities were groups of plants, they could be divided into three categories: old oak forests, colonies of quaking aspens, and fast-growing bamboo groves.
The quaking aspens of North America are the kings of adaptation. They reproduce mainly by growing root sprouts, so an individual tree can create a vast colony of clones. In Utah, the Pando aspen colony is a single quaking aspen (about 8,000 years old) and is the heaviest known living organism on Earth.
Global network cities like New York are the quintessential aspen colony: adapting and changing with the times. It is now the biggest financial centre in the world, but as recently as the 1950s, New York was the hub of the biggest industrial cluster in the US and the industry was garments.
Quaking aspen colony (image source: Wikipedia)
