In a talk about charter cities on TED in 2009, Paul Romer explains extremely brilliantly how cities develop their own charter, their own rules, to grow as cities, to create the value of cities as a center of exchange, of creativity. This perspective is very interesting, and applies to a number of cities who have grown with specific rules that did only apply within their limited territory.
In 2011, Paul Romer comes again to TED and announces that a country in Central America has passed a constitutional change to allow a city to grow out of nothing in the middle of the country, with specific rules to be developed for that new territory to foster economic growth.
I doubt that will work. All the examples Paul Romer is drawing upon – Singapore, Hong Kong, are cities that developed thanks to their environment, and not independently of it. Hong Kong was the door to China and thrived on this relationship. Singapore is placed at a key geographical bottleneck of world commerce, and thrived as a logistics and shipping platform. Can one create a city anywhere, with specific rules to promote growth, and hope that the city will expand?
I doubt it. Let’s watch the experiment and hope that there won’t be too much disappointment.
