Fortunately, those who want a chance to live as a legal resident in a modern urban center don’t have to wait for the legacy cities to act. A new city is worth far more than it costs to build one. Without relying on any charity, new cities could emerge and provide the competition that is the only real hope for the excluded and marginalized.
Ideally, new cities will be created close to the greatest source of potential residents, in developing countries. They typically do not have in place the system of rules that a successful city will require, but their governments can offer these rules in large-scale special reform zones on unoccupied land. These zones can put new rules in place without forcing them on anyone. People will then have a chance to opt-into life under these rules if they want to, just as when millions of people from Communist China opted in to life in Hong Kong.
The challenge for policymakers, academics, and the planning and design community will be to support the countries that pursue this strategy of inclusive, affordable urbanization. To use an automotive analogy, the world does not need a few more hand-crafted, one-off luxury sedans that feed off of status competition among the elite. The demand is for model T’s.
This is interesting. I'm no expert on the subject of urbanization; I have a feeling, though, that like so much else in the next century this will boil down (pun intended) to water consumption.
No comments:
Post a Comment