I’ve seen the future and it works. I’ve just got back from Singapore. I’ve been doing a series of workshops for the likes of Procter & Gamble and Cadbury Schweppes based around some of the content from my book.

Singapore is interesting. The place has always made me feel slightly uneasy but I am starting to wonder whether it isn’t a model of what a future city might look like. Let me explain.

Half the people in the world now live in cities but a large proportion of these cities don’t work because the infrastructure can’t cope with the amount of people and so on. Part of the problem is that democratically elected governments won’t commit to any new idea or policy (e.g. a major infrastructure improvement) that doesn’t deliver benefits during the term of the government. Hence ideas become ridiculously short term, ridiculously small and ridiculously parochial. And, to make matters worse, all major policy ideas are deferred to focus groups before anyone will decide anything. The overall result, it seems to me, is either no decisions whatsoever or a watering down of any idea that is faintly courageous.

But we all know what focus groups are like. Half the time they are comprised of men and women taken off the street because, quite frankly, anyone with half a brain a) isn’t wandering around aimlessly on the street and b) anyone with half a brain wandering the streets wouldn’t agree to go along to something as dim witted as a focus group even if you paid them. By and large focus groups empower the incapable.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. I’m not going to get into a political critique of Singapore and I’m certainly not arguing that anything is acceptable just as long as the trains run on time. Not at all. All I am saying is that in some respects a new system other that pure democracy might be needed.

For example, what if governments – especially city governments – were given 10 or 20 years to run things rather than 4 or 5? What if, once elected, they could stay there unless they abused their power or infringed some agreed ethical code?