Cities can’t exist without a hinterland – the ‘land behind’ and around them that supports the city, provides people, resources, a place for the products of the city – for good and bad – to flow out to, a place for the city to grow into.
Ideas need a hinterland too – a wider landscape they emerge from, draw on, connect to. The healthier, wider, more varied the hinterland, the more connections the idea has to wider realities, the richer, more robust, more joyful and life giving the idea.
People, organisations and companies need hinterlands too – the ‘wrapper’ of other humans and groups and the spaces we live in. Often, this hinterland – these people and places – are really the main point.
So each day we have a choice: are we bringing life to our hinterland, enriching the soil we grow from, or are we growing rich by exploiting it?