As assured as the idea is, I have to expose it for its projected inequities, and I’m not even religious per se, however, the overtone of using the term (inequities) in this context just seems fitting.
"Ideas: Charter Cities" is the heading of the piece as featured in Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. However, the title of the actual article is: “For Richer, For Poorer.” I have yet to see it in its full length. What follows is the excerpt from BusinessWeek, dated February 22, 2010.
Disastes such as the earthquake in Haiti are capable of mobilizing a global community of aid donors. But relief efforts, no matter how well funded, are rarely enough to set impoverished countries on a path to prosperity.
To do that, policymakers must devise ways to unlock the entrepreneurial drive of the poor. That goal could be accomplished through the creation of charter cities, argues Paul Romer in an article in the January issue of Prospect, a British magazine. Romer, a development expert affiliated with Stanford University, envisions an arrangement between poor and developed countries under which the former cedes a patch of land and the latter is responsible for writing and enforcing laws that govern commercial and other activities within the territory. There are precedents for such partnerships. Hong Kong flourished under British rule, and the island nation of Mauritius, where the British Privy Council is still the court of final appeal, boast one of the highest standards of living in sub-Saharan Africa. “The credibility of rules developed over centuries by the British government was essential to attracting foreign investment, companies, and skilled workers” to Hong Kong, says Romer.
But there have also been failures. In the 1990s, Singapore tried to establish variants of charter cities in China and Indonesia but ran into difficulties because local authorities retained too many discretionary powers.
Romer’s is a provocative idea---one that smacks of neocolonialism. Radical solutions may be needed, though, to pull countries like Haiti, which has defied conventional approaches, out of a downward spiral.
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