Renato de Castro
The Fourth Industrial Revolution had been knocking on our doors long before the new pandemic. Although technology had already begun to empower citizens and to significantly enhance the leading role of our cities, the real transformation this time is not the technology itself, but the speed in which changes are taking place. We are on the edge of a new revolution. If, on the one hand, this revolution was formerly being put into place by the digitalization of the world and by connectivity, which eliminated borders and stimulated the exchange of ideas, on the other hand, we are witnessing the beginning of a new world order: localization. A quick and easy way to define localization would be to say that it is literally the opposite of globalization. However, when explained that way, localization sounds more like an NGO movement against capitalism, or like radical separatist movements, when it is actually far from that. Despite being a trend that had gained force over the past decade, especially in Europe after the 2008 crisis, few were the times in which I saw the term “localization” being defended didactically in the context of global economy. Generations Y (born from 1982 to 1994) and Z (born between 1995 and 2010), especially the latter, which is also known as post-millennials or centennials, already showed a natural preference for localization in their lifestyles and consumption habits.
According to a study entitled Millennials & Centennials New Kids on the Block by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, there are currently 2 billion millennials and 2.4 billion centennials worldwide, which accounts for 27% and 37% of the world’s population, respectively. This means that these groups combined constitute the majority of the planet’s population, and their purchasing power has a direct influence on the global economy. As these younger generations take the lead, the main elements for an equation of the new world economy are well defined. These are: artificial intelligence; the Internet of things; and all of the hypertechnologies that are part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, at the same time, we are still dealing with major deficiencies of the “traditional” globalization model, such as the high concentration of production in a small number of countries, disorderly consumption, and growing environmental threats. The world crisis caused by COVID-19 ended up being the catalyzer that was missing in order to speed up the rate of change. Welcome to the new world of Km 4.Zero Economy , a new paradigm that combines superlocal economic trends to hypertechnology, and which may help us recover from, or at least mitigate, the economic effects of the pandemic.