Many more people will live in megacities where high levels of population density mean the problems – jobs, housing, water and energy shortages; transport congestion; pollution and health issues – can far outweigh the benefits, notes Reynold D'Silva, formerly of Facebook APAC, now senior vice president at Go-Jek.
“The megacities that are facing these problems most acutely are in emerging markets, not developed ones,” he writes in An operating system for the modern megacity; as such, these are unlikely to see massive government investments in infrastructure or the deployment of the most advanced, high-cost technologies.
“Instead they will have to be found through a combination of human ingenuity and widely-available, low-cost technologies such as the smartphone,” he states.
So the crowded roads of Jakarta won’t have driverless cars any time soon, but Go-Jek’s ride-hailing app can help bring people to the places they need to go, and bring products and services to people.
D’Silva observes that many people living megacities have limited dwelling space, meaning they don’t, for example, stock beverages or desserts at home and suggests that “[w]ith the rapid growth in home delivery of restaurant food, every main course order is potentially an incremental growth opportunity for beverage and dessert brands”.
Brands can also overlay consumer transaction data onto map coordinates to highlight the geographic zones within the megacity where significant growth opportunities exist.
“Retailers and food service brands will be able to leverage this type of analysis to plan store locations. Banks can plan where to open branches and ATMs. Consumer brands can choose the best locations for outdoor advertising, product sampling and distribution.”
OOH sites are becoming community hubs, offering everything from phone charging stations, WiFi and telephone services which are funded entirely by advertising revenues, according to Steve Payne, Director of Insight & Marketing, Kinetic Worldwide.
In Smart cities and out-of-home advertising, he details another side of the possibilities for brands: investment in environmental and connectivity services being built into the world around consumers.
“The smart city we want to see doesn’t need to wait until tomorrow – the building blocks are already all around us,” he says.

Sourced from Admap