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The City Solution |
rffrydr
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 Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:19 pm Post subject: The City Solution |
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The City is its own economy and is expressed in a grammar understood now around the globe. More than that is the 10m city not the real "invisible hand" of our time?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/city-solutions/kunzig-text
| Quote: | The quintessence of the vibrant city for Glaeser is Wall Street, especially the trading floor, where millionaires forsake large offices to work in an open-plan bath of information. "They value knowledge over space—that's what the modern city is all about," he said. Successful cities "increase the returns to being smart" by enabling people to learn from one another. In cities with higher average education, even the uneducated earn higher wages; that's evidence of "human capital spillover."
Spillover works best face-to-face. No technology yet invented—not the telephone, the Internet, or videoconferencing—delivers the fertile chance encounters that cities have delivered since the Roman Forum was new. Nor do they deliver the nonverbal, contextual cues that help us convey complex ideas—to see from the glassy eyes of our listeners, for instance, that we're talking too fast.
It's easy to see why economists would embrace cities, warts and all, as engines of prosperity. It has taken a bit longer for environmentalists, for whom Henry David Thoreau's cabin in the woods has been a lodestar. By increasing income, cities increase consumption and pollution too. If what you value most is nature, cities look like concentrated piles of damage—until you consider the alternative, which is spreading the damage. From an ecological standpoint, says Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and now a champion of urbanization, a back-to-the-land ethic would be disastrous. (Thoreau, Glaeser points out gleefully, once accidentally burned down 300 acres of forest.) Cities allow half of humanity to live on around 4 percent of the arable land, leaving more space for open country. |
Of course we know that the millionaires have long forsaken their "dirty bath" of information for the dirty business of creating their own information--and even exchanges. And India has just reneged on its commitment to the chill-chain offered by western supermarkets. China builds them and they DON"T come. But that was true of Brasilia too. San Francisco almost exists as Silicon Valley's Disneyland where cellphones are closer than blocks--yet it continues to exist. A "post-city" city? Then there is Blade Runner, a little Seoul in all of us. There is a logic here that will shape our relations with the world--and it with its OWN kind of economy. Figuring that out will be key to investment decisions in years to come.
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:13 am Post subject: |
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Chongqing has more than 30m people, but it’s not Shanghai. A recent anti-corruption campaign there grew so violent that it terrified legitimate businessfolk as well as crooks.
--economist
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 11:47 am Post subject: |
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http://www.amazon.com/Economy-Cities-Jane-Jacobs/dp/039470584X
From the comments:
| Quote: | | The title of this book is slightly misleading, because the thesis of the book is that cities play an essential role in the process of economic development. Although its anecdotal style gives this book a disarmingly unsystematic appearance, this is a profound book. It is easily one of the most important books written during the 20th century. Economic development is something about which conventional marginal utility economics has very little to say. The Economy of Cities, therefore, fills a kind of void. It stands to conventional economics in much the same position as quantum physics stands to classical physics. |
| Quote: | Another important view she has is that agriculture was invented in cities (or at least towns). When I first read this, I thought it was absurd: one thinks of rural areas with villages growing wheat or rice, with some domestic animals; and then towns slowly growing out of them. Jacobs says tractors, ploughs, hoes, winnowing equipment, everything, was a town product. I don't know if she would have pushed this view right back to prehistory, but it certainly makes sense. (She describes Catal Huyuk in what's now Turkey in one of her first books. And claims that the mutant form of wheat with multiple ears on the stalk may have been identified by a farmer - not accidentally spread).
With these approaches, she identifies five aspects of cities which are 'import-replacing' (i.e. create their own net wealth): markets, jobs, transplants, technology, capital. She makes a convincing case why countries all have one capital - Holland, France, Britain, Sweden. |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2012 10:37 am Post subject: |
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Calcutta: The anti-city?
http://www.economist.com/node/21542446
| Quote: | | According to the central bank, the state accounted for a quarter of India’s industrial capital stock in 1950. By 1960 it contributed 13% of manufacturing output and by 2000 just 7%. |
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rffrydr
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2012 10:13 am Post subject: |
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In 1800 there were three cities of 1M or more: London, Peking, Edo.
In 1900 there were 16 cities: including NY, Paris, Berlin, Ceylon. London showed its Empire with 6.5M, more than twice the average.
In 1950 there were 74. Moscow, Sydney, Jakarta, Guanzhou, KL,Sao Paolo, Buenos Aries,..and filling out europe to its current 75% urban saturation.
In 2010 there are 442 such cities: London's 8M is little changed while Tokyo spouts 36.7M, Delhi 22.2M, Mumbai 20M, Mexico City, 20M. NY holding at 8.
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