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Judging by contradictory "persuasive" & "unconvincing" ratings, charter cities must be a very polarizing issue. Lets discuss the pros & cons
Pro (as in, why we would want to support this):
- Building a city creates a multitude of economic opportunities for businesses and individuals
- Building a city in someone else's country keeps those people out of your own country by reducing the need for emigration
- Building a new city may be much easier and less expensive than fixing the problems with existing cities
- Setting up "charter" rules in a city may allow a government or corporation to pick and choose which local laws they wish to follow, allowing them more flexibility in their business practices
Con (as in, why we would NOT want to support this):
- Building a city uses up large areas of land that might have important environmental or agricultural value
- Building a city in someone else's country means that all those jobs you could have created in your own country will now almost certainly go to someone in another country.
- Building a new city does not fix the problems with the existing cities, and could lead to "ghost towns" where people abandon the old city for the new one, or where people can't afford to live in the new city and it remains uninhabited
- Setting up "charter" rules in a city may allow a government or corporation to pick and choose which local laws they wish to follow, allowing them to use much more destructive business practices
I'm sure this is nowhere near an exhaustive list. I'd be interested to hear how the TED audience can expand these lists.
Closing Statement from Adam Hoffman
Some very good points have been made here, and I would like to refer everyone to the recently released talk about the math of cities:
http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations.html
It is clear that there are some major advantages to creating cities, and clearly global urbanization is the trend that we're following, whether we like it or not. It is also clear that with these advantages, there come some major issues that we will need to solve. As cities grow and become more plentiful, so too do problems like crime and pollution and disease. As Geoffrey West points out, the way to stay ahead of these problems is to innovate at an ever increasing rate. Perhaps creating charter cities is just one way that we can get a fresh start on beating these problems, but it appears that there is much thought to be put into exactly how the rules are defined for such cities.
Thank you everyone who has participated in this conversation!
Jeremie Averous
Hong Kong thrived because it was (and it still is) the gateway to China.
Singapore where I live draws it success from Malaysia, Indonesia from where it imports human resources (the best students from these countries end up being offered Singapore permanent residency) and serves as a trading center for the resources of all South-East Asia. Singapore is also geographically strategically located, and that has been recognized for centuries (all trade from Europe to Asia go through the Singapore straits).
So while I agree that the right set of rules will help success - and by the way it is quite easier to design an applicable set of rules over a small territory with a small population compared to an entire country - I don't agree that you can create a thriving city anywhere. The environment is primordial, and a city indeed still draws value and riches from its surroundings. If the environment is poor, the city will never thrive.
Bernd Fesel 30+
http://www.shrinkingcities.com/index.php?id=2&L=1
I favor developing and "re-vitalizing" our existing cities - by the way: this has been the way how some of our most attractive cities today came to be what they are. They revented themselves after wars, depressions, migration riots and so forth. evolution is not an orderly system like a charter cities looks like on first site. However all the comments here show: the charter cities is good ideology and fascinating idea - and as all these ideas in the last century it will fail.
We are working for the improvement of cities by culture impulses and strategies - the European Capital of Culture 2010 attempted this in the Ruhr Region including some 53 cities, the former industrial heart of the world. We interviewed Prof. Leggewie of the German Cultural Institute about pro and cons, film - engl. subtitles: http://tinyurl.com/6enstz2
Maybe some lessons to learn for charter cities as well?
allan henderson
Adam Hoffman 50+
The trick, then, is how does one generate an event significant enough to a effect such a major change in a city. I don't think we'll be seeing the Olympics in Detroit anytime soon, but I doubt there will be a war to help fix that failing city.
Are there other ways to inject life into a city?
Mu Lorien
allan henderson
The rules in charter cities will be written by the developers who finance them, because it is they who stand to lose their shirts if those rules turn out to be defective and would-be residents thus stay away. It's precisely because they stand to profit from the success of their charter city that we can be assured that the laws, institutions and personnel they install there will sustainably serve the needs of their customers.
Mu Lorien
allan henderson
Corporate governance (i.e. how shareholders keep their managers' interests aligned with their own) is an issue for all public companies. And charter city developers may of course be privately held.
George Bailey
Romer convinced the president of Madagascar that a charter city should be established there but, in his ignorance, he failed to meet with opposition parties or with the public to gain their support for the project. He merely got the person “in charge” to sign away a piece of the country without a hint of a national conversation or debate. The result was that the agreement gave political leverage to an opposition leader who organized street demonstrations and strikes. In the violence that erupted as government police fired on demonstrators, 28 people died and the president with whom he negotiated was deposed.
Not every government, particularly in underdeveloped countries, rules with the consent of the governed and not every leader enters into policy and infrastructure agreements with the best interests of their country in mind. Paul Romer’s naive attempts to advance his theories and accomplish his goals without understanding the complex relationships of interests on the ground led to loss of life and regime change. Even Paul Romer cannot repeal the law of unintended consequences.
allan henderson
It's also by no means clear that more debate in Madagascar would have prevented the nationalists from rioting. It might have incited even more political violence: would you then have said that Professor Romer had 'blood on his hands' because of his reckless decision to start an inflammatory debate?
Christopher Doll 20+
I hope the Hondurans are going on something more than his previous TED talk, it was seriously lacking in the social and especially environmental aspects of cities. In particular, it sounds like creating a small colony in another country. Most obviously..
How do you deal with the inevitable migration of poor people from other areas into the new gleaming city?
Where does the city get its resources from?
Even how the city makes its money (endogenously) is not clear.
allan henderson
A charter city would have to ship in its resources (and ship out its manufactures) by rail or truck just like any other city. Most of them are bought and sold on the world market.
Adam Hoffman 50+
The primary function of government, be it a democracy or a communist regime or a dictatorship, is to protect its people. If a government cannot provide opportunities for its people without compromising the rules that protect its people, that government has lost its right to govern, and the people have every right to replace the government. Charter cities as a means to circumvent the government is not, by any means, a politically or ethically sustainable solution, let alone an environmentally sustainable one.
allan henderson
So I agree that charter cities can fail, but their failure will be as harmless as the failure of any other business that now struggles to win customers in an unforgiving marketplace.
Adam Hoffman 50+
The advantage of a government, or at least a "good" government, is that if a government tries to pull that kind of stunt, the people have a say, and can effect a change in that leadership. The system therefore has a built-in feedback mechanism that is not present in the purely capitalist, corporation-run city. Yes, I agree that there is some degree of feedback in a charter city; the corporation still has to make the city look attractive enough to keep people moving in. Relative to the poor conditions that exist in the places these charter cities might develop, though, that can't be all that hard.
My big problem with the charter city is not the capitalists, really. It's the idea that the builders of these cities get to make their own rules. I do think that having big companies building cities for the poor could be a good thing, but not if those people don't have a say, vis-a-vis local government, in how the rules of the city are defined.
allan henderson
The rules in charter cities won't be witches' brews of weird laws and institutions that have never been tried before. They'll be patterned on those that have proven themselves elsewhere. And it's quite likely that the residents of charter cities will have the power to explicitly vote for many policies.
Mario Ashkar
In either case I imagine happy citizens and blossoming cities. I think the real issue is ensuring that the investor, either national or corporate, builds a water-friendly, forest-friendly, solar-powered charter city.
allan henderson
Adam Hoffman 50+
Companies will build these charter cities precisely because there is no competition. Not many companies will have the resources to build cities, and those that do will have plenty of areas in which to do so and evade any possible competitors. You won't see two charter cities right next to each other advertising why they are the better choice for the poor family that can't afford a long distance move. As such, there will be no competition to regulate the city market, and people won't get much "choice." It's not an information asymmetry; it's a geographic asymmetry.
allan henderson
The real advantage of a nearby charter city is not that it's cheaper to move there - moving is a one-time expense and travel by sea (on a ship built for economy) is pretty cheap - but that it allows you to visit your friends and relatives back home more often or more cheaply. Suppose for the sake of example that you want to visit them once per year. If it costs $50 to take a bus from a nearby charter city and $300 to take a boat+bus from a distant charter city, then the nearby charter city could charge you up to $250 more per year (supposing that the two cities have the same quality) and still be a better deal.
What this means is that in principle, a charter city might be able to profit by charging a modest surcharge to its local customers. As usual, there are dangers here. If the profits earned in this way are large (because your customers are very fond of visiting their villages), then another developer will destroy your local monopoly by building its own charter city next door. So if you want to hang on to that profit, you'll have to keep it pretty low.
There could also be practical problems with identifying the people who really are local and with setting the surcharge at the right level. And the policy would be sure to foster resentment among your local customers; it would be bad PR in general, people would come to see your city as disreputable and mercenary, and you would lose business to charter cities that seem more equitable.
And even supposing that these drawbacks were not there, and every charter city made full use of its limited monopoly power, the effect would be as if charter cities were all distant from everyone. That would be suboptimal, but not the end of the world.
Genevieve Tran 50+
really says it all. As a modern society, we almost never think about the human, social or environmental impact of our economic decisions. Dr. Romer's talk makes sense economically, but would have been more revolutionary in 1960 or 1970. To be truly innovative NOW, he really needed to address the environmental and social impact of Charter Cities.
Matan Arad
When the Mayans moved from villages to cities they went extinct in a few centuries because of over consumption of the land they were living on; The Rapanui people of the Easter Island are belived to be extinct again because of deforestation of the island and land deterioration caused by massive farming to feed an ever-growing city-like society....
The European model for cities isn't that different, and is relatively new - about 3 centuries old, only it has spread throughout the globe and is now held as a norm.
Unfortunately we didn't learn from those ancient civilizations and are today, like then, approaching a boiling point so to speak.
Transition to the city is a natural process that requires the establishment of a broad periphery that can sustain the city. If we take Israel as an example of where cities were built to settle people in the process, we'll see a backward periphery trying to catch up rather than support the city.
Another problem i find with this idea is the damage to a traditional lifestyle in the region, in a world that is already losing cultural diversity (and languages) at an alarming rate.
Another thing is that as it is we have too less darkness in the night worldwide and new cities would make even more light pollution - yes, it is a form of pollution...... and the list goes on....
the benefits Mr. Romer is suggesting are merely economic, and that, in my opinion isn't a justified cause for more cities to emerge on this earth. Of course there are many other advantages in a city but those aren't presented on this talk.
Kyle Mears
In countries like Guatemala people who live in rural villages use much more land for sustenance farming, often at the expense of local forest. These people have large families. The children of these families will have large families, unless they move to the city. Cities are one of the best ways to fight world-wide overpopulation that we know of. People have more opportunities in cities and are usually much better off than their village counterparts. This includes education, even in slums.
Cities have many other benefits, such as the quicker spread of ideas increasing entrepreneurship and creativity. These usually increase non-linearly with the size of the city.
With the advent of vertical farms, hopefully we will be able to move even our farming nearer or in cities and reduce the amount of land we use.
Cities allow us to slow or stop population growth and sequester our human impact into a much smaller area.
Adam Hoffman 50+
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/07/detroit-illiteracy-nearly-half-education_n_858307.html
Even accepting your assertions as fact, however, I'm not sure that they justify building new cities out of previously "unused" space.
To add to my own list, you must consider that a city may have less of an immediate apparent effect on the local land than a rural village, except when you consider that a city represents a very concentrated center of resource consumption, with very little resource production. That means all of the resources consumed by a city must be produced elsewhere and the city casts a very large shadow in terms of good production and land destruction, not to mention the fact that all those goods must be transported to the city, often from very far away, at great financial and environmental cost.
allan henderson