"The notion of multiple target currencies opens up a new way of thinking in economics."
Edward de Bono, The IBM Dollar
An astonishing three trillion frequent flyer miles issued by airlines over the past ten years are still unspent. If any of their executives doubted whether air miles or nectar points were a kind of money, the airline accountants were quick to explain that they were.
But of course, loyalty points can be more subtle than ordinary money. They are an information system that can use spare capacity to get people to behave in a certain way - and that�s just as relevant to cities as it is to companies.
Witness, for example, the extraordinary success of the Brazilian city of Curitiba, which issued points to people for recycling their rubbish - and which were enthusiastically collected by street children handing in litter off the streets. The points could be spent during off-peak times on the buses. The result: Curitiba is the cleanest city in Latin America, and all paid for by spare public transport capacity.
