Here is what progress looks like in Binh Duong, Vietnam, in 2025. A 44,000-square-meter factory under construction, built to LEED Gold, with 50,000 solar panels generating power from a rooftop the size of 70 football fields. One of many industrial parks flourishing in the fastest-growing industrial producer in the world.
Now look at the same site from 500 meters up. The factory sits inside a Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park, surrounded by manufacturers who share none of its energy systems, whose waste streams connect to nothing, whose material flows terminate at the loading dock. As built, it is a collection of isolated objects, not a system.
Vietnam is in the middle of building 410 of them. There are plenty of examples of what comes next. In the 1960s and 1970s, the US, Britain, Germany, and Japan built industrial prosperity at enormous environmental cost. Rivers caught fire. The model that worked also exported its damage into the air, water, and public health of surrounding communities.
The zones are sectoral silos. Potential for synergy is everywhere, and connected to nothing.