March 30, 2025 • 54 mins
In PX129 our guest is Jeffrey Mason of the Charter Cities Institute. Jeffrey joined CCI as a Researcher in 2019. His research interests include urban economics, structural transformation, special economic zones, and technology ecosystems. He has worked on policy advisory projects in Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and Honduras, among other countries. Prior to joining the Charter Cities Institute, Jeffrey worked as an MA Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Maryland and an MA in economics from George Mason University. His writing has been featured in publications including City Journal, Works in Progress, Investment Monitor, Quartz Africa, and The American Mind. The Charter Cities Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to creating the ecosystem for charter cities, founded on the idea that a fresh approach was necessary to tackle humanity’s most pressing challenges, such as global poverty, climate change and rapid urbanisation.
CCI believe charter cities—new cities granted a special jurisdiction to create a new governance system—are that solution. By improving governance through deep regulatory and administrative reforms, charter cities can help accelerate economic growth in developing countries and lift tens of millions of people out of poverty. Details at https://chartercitiesinstitute.org
In podcast extra / culture corner, Jeff recommends the book ‘Outsourcing Empire: How Company-States Made the Modern World' by Andrew Phillips and JC Sharman https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691203515/outsourcing-empire
Jess recommends the TV series Ted Lasso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Lasso Pete recommends the book ‘The Diaries of Fred Williams 1963 - 1970’ https://www.amazon.com.au/Diaries-Fred-Williams-1963-1970/dp/0522871208
Episode PX129 was released on 31 March 2025.
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(00:00):
This podcast is supported by VPLA.
Victorian PlanningEnvironmental Law Association.
Welcome to the Planning Exchangewhere we interview built environment
professionals who are doinginteresting work beyond the ordinary.
I'm Jess Noonan and I'm joinedby my colleague Peter Jewell.
we're speaking with Geoffrey Mason.
He's the head of policy atCharter Cities Institute.
(00:20):
He joined CCI as a researcher in2019, and his research interests
include urban economics, structuraltransformation, Special Economic
Zones and Technology Ecosystems.
He's worked on policy advisory projectsin Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and
Honduras, amongst other countries.
Prior to joining the Charter CitiesInstitute, Jeffrey worked as an MA
(00:43):
Fellow at George Mason University.
He holds a BA in Economics from theUniversity of Maryland and an MA in
Economics from George Mason University.
Welcome to the show, Jeff.
Thanks for having me, Peterand Jessica, glad to be here.
Now, can you tell uswhat is a Charter City?
So, in short, a charter city isa new city with better rules.
(01:07):
In the 21st century, rapidurbanization at a massive scale
is really the defining challenge.
For much of the developingworld, especially sub Saharan
Africa, South Asia and elsewhere.
The scale of this urbanization, additionalbillions of new urban residents, across
these countries and in just a fewdecades, that's a really hard problem
(01:28):
for governments to try to solve, in termsof infrastructure, provision, service
delivery, in terms of economies toprovide the growth necessary to support
that kind of urbanization, withoutendless economically unproductive sprawl.
So we think that, building masterplan cities, new cities in the
growth path of existing cities.
(01:50):
Can help capture some of that urbanizationin a way that is ultimately more
productive, more primed for growth, andmore prepared for rapid urban expansion.
And then if you're doing, these sort ofmaster planned, city projects that it
makes a lot of sense to pair them, withthe kind of innovations and governance.
That are typically used in specialeconomic zones, which is typically
(02:12):
applied to, like, an industrial parksetting, but is increasingly being
applied to new and innovative contexts.
So you can create the sort of newurban hub to focus infrastructure,
investment, focus, job creation,focus, service delivery.
All these types of things, and pair thatwith reforms to governance, to promote
(02:34):
growth, to build state capacity, whenit might be difficult or, politically
difficult or infeasible to say, dofull scale reforms at a national level.
Some of those things can make adifference in terms of effective
government and economic growth.
You can start out on a smallerscale in a limited geographic area.
And so we focus primarily, I'm sorry.
(02:54):
I was just going to say to paint apicture, Jeff, have you got an example of
an existing charter city or a city thatyou've worked on that you could talk to?
Sure.
One good example of somethinglike a charter city.
Would be tattoo city in Nairobi, Kenya.
So this is a new city, privatelydeveloped city just outside of Nairobi.
(03:16):
It has status as a special economic zone.
It's building, it's taking in lotsof, investment in various industries.
It's deployed lots of infrastructure.
And it's also paired that with housing,public spaces and other uses like that.
So it combines, the,sort of economic focus.
You know, something like an industrialpark, with housing developments.
(03:38):
How big is that, Jeff?
What sort of scale are we talking?
I don't know the exact figures off thetop of my head, but they're looking at
at least a couple thousand residentsin after several years of construction.
I think their master plan is lookingat sort of tens of thousands or more.
So they're not building thatparticular project to say.
(03:58):
Accommodate a million orsomething of that scale.
But is a fairly large area,and has a lot of room to grow.
And there's projects like that, allthroughout Africa, Asia and elsewhere.
Some maybe focus on, different economicsectors through targeting, for investment.
So we're targeting differentprice points, right?
There's a sort of emerging middleclass, throughout a lot of the
(04:20):
developing world that, some ofthese projects are catering to.
Others are trying to figure out,how can we push the price point of
housing and entry, as low as possible.
Because right when you're working in.
Countries where it's, you know, 2000,3000, 4000, 5000 GDP per capita, the
lower you can push the price point, ofhousing and those kind of things, right?
The untapped market for, for that is huge.
(04:43):
So some are focusingreally large scale, right?
How can we attract.
Big industry with lots of employment,lots of jobs, and others are sort
of taking a more targeted approach.
So we're building a tech hub or a clusterfor this industry or that industry.
So there's a wide range of, ofwhat you could call a charter
city projects throughout.
Jeff, we'll talk about a bit moreabout charter cities in the scale of
(05:05):
the issue, but about you, what ledyou to your current role and what
sparked your interests in city making?
Sure.
So in short, Twitter.
While I was in grad school atthe time, a couple of years
ago, I was interested in things.
I have an economics background.
So I was interested in economicdevelopments and governance
and public policy, you know,these, these kinds of things.
(05:27):
And you had an interest in cities,but I never sort of focused on it,
in any kind of concentrated way.
It was in the same socialprofessional circle, as the charter
city's founder, Mark Lutter.
I was looking for what to work on next.
Hey, you guys, what you'redoing looks really cool.
Would love to work with you guys.
Signed up to work on a, researchproject as I was finishing school
(05:51):
and then, stayed ever since.
It's been about six years.
Since then.
I was employee number three at the time.
We started there.
And I've been, very focused on cities,especially from a global perspective.
Ever since.
We've spoken a little bit about chartercities itself and what its mission is.
How does it work?
Does charter citiesordinarily partner with.
(06:12):
Particular governments or withparticular private clients.
Is that generally how it works?
Sure.
We do a handful of things.
One is, active partnerships andtechnical assistance, and we've
done that both with governments.
We've worked with governments, ina couple of different countries.
on legislative projects.
For example, in Malawi, we worked withthe National Planning Commission there,
(06:33):
who was leading the revision of thecountry's special economic zones law.
And we worked with them to includelanguage, in that bill, which became
law at the, end of 2023, which whollyrevised their special economic zones,
but also included provisions that wouldallow, secondary cities and urban areas,
to be established as, as, as secs.
(06:54):
So that's, that's one example.
And we've, we're working on, similarengagement right now in, Zambia,
with a legislative process that'sbeen ongoing for a couple of years.
Then we also work on the private side.
For city developers.
We've done urban planning services,feasibility studies, case studies,
helping with investment detraction.
Sort of a whole suiteof, different activities.
(07:15):
And then we also engage in yourtypical, think tank type activities.
So research, public media and engagement.
And we also try to act as aconvener for this sort of strange
ecosystem, of governments and citybuilders, financial institutions.
Practitioners and experts,academics, et cetera.
And to, coalesce theconversation about new cities.
(07:36):
So
it sounds so good, Jeff.
It sounds like it's almostpure planning in lots of ways.
Just rather than what we do is,have battles about, suburban
developments in first world.
Countries and you know, height limits andthis and all the public consultation, but
your focus is largely on the global South.
A lot of people might be familiarwith that term in general sense, but
(08:00):
can you just explain it at a Twitterstyle and also why it's particularly
relevant to new city development?
And I know you've touched onthat, but if you could just talk
about what the global South means.
Yeah, that's Global South is just kind ofthe in vogue term for, I think, everybody
called developing countries 10 years ago.
(08:22):
And really, in terms of new citiesthat that's where most, most of
the projects are, I touched onbefore, the sort of urban rates
of urbanization that you're seeing
sub Saharan Africa, India and elsewhere.
It's really at a pace and a scale unlikeanything that we've seen, in the United
States, Europe or anything like that.
(08:43):
And it's also happening at a much lower.
Level of economic developmentthat occurred here, right?
I think the United States, for example,hit and I know there's you can quibble
about how countries sort of define whaturban means, but I think the United States
hit 50 percent urban in, the early 1920s,I believe, at I think the figure is maybe
(09:05):
5, 000, 7, 000, US dollars per capita.
Korea hit it in the seventies atmaybe 3500, something like that.
And you see a lot of countries now arehitting, 50 percent or more urbanization
or are well on their way to gettingthere, with simply much, much less
dynamic economies, and much lesscapable governments, to respond to that.
(09:27):
So there's both a demand sideto this, just the sheer volume
of people moving to cities.
And who need thosecities to be productive.
And then there's also a sort ofsupply side in terms of, a growing
interest, both from the privatesector and ever more so the sort of
development finance institutions.
Your Africa development banks, yourAfrica export import banks, these
(09:48):
types of groups, they're increasinglyinterested in urban projects.
And then also from governments, andthere's a long history, especially
with governments of city projects,and, you know, we can get into, there's
sort of a mixed track record there.
But yeah, it's also not something new.
I think the scale at which.
The number of city projects of varioustypes and forms are being built, and
(10:09):
financed and planned is higher, isreally taking off compared to the
past, but it's really just a sort ofextension of a much longer history.
Of these types of newcity project, efforts.
Just moving into a discussionabout the need for new cities.
In the past, governments have been themain drivers of new city development.
So thinking of capital cities likeBrasilia or Canberra, what's different
(10:33):
today and what role can or shouldprivate actors play in that space?
Sure.
Yeah, especially in themid 20th century, right?
There's a lot of examples.
And even into like, eveninto today, there's still
examples of countries who are.
Either building entirely new capitalcities, or at least, maybe, maybe
(10:53):
capital districts might be moreappropriate phrase for some of them.
Egypt is doing one.
Indonesia is another one ofnote, that's trying this, South
Korea did this a few years ago.
So those kind of effortsare still ongoing.
Even for non capital city relatedprojects, there are still a number of
public sector led, new city projects.
(11:14):
Even if they're not formally newcapitals, Senegal is doing one outside
of Dakar, for example, and they've moved,some of their, ministries out there.
The U. N. Presence in Senegalis based out of that city.
For instance, we're working with a publicprivate project in Zambia right now.
The government is interested in.
(11:35):
They're doing a new hydro project,hydro power project, and they want
to do a sort of urban extensionand zone kind of off of that.
Investment.
So that like that's anotherexample of a republic type
project that we're working on.
But yeah, there's a growingindustry, and a willingness to
finance, private led city projects.
(11:55):
Some of these projects arecoming from a more sort of
traditional real estate background.
And, you know, they sometimes it'sbasically just a housing estate.
And that's kind of on one side of things.
Maybe they start to bring in someeconomic activity beyond housing as well.
You can go the other way, andfind projects that at their core
are closer to industrial parks.
That maybe are starting to, incorporatehousing and other amenities.
(12:17):
And between those, there's this emergingproduct type of project that is a true
combination of both targeting industry,housing public space, commercial, and
that these projects are in fact bankablethat they're commercially viable.
We're seeing that.
All over the world,
Jeff, there must be some sensitivityin not wishing to challenge national
(12:42):
or local or regional sovereignty.
So it must be a very delicate measure towork in this space without with allowing
the whatever government body stillretain, well, essentially, oversight.
Is that, can you talk alittle bit about that?
(13:06):
Sure.
So most projects, that CCI works withand just as a general model that we sort
of, tend to advocate for, is to pursuesome form of public private partnership,
structure, align long term incentivesbetween private developers, Who can raise
the capital, to deploy infrastructure.
And also, come with the, advantages, ofhaving more grounded budget constraints.
(13:30):
Um, a sort of impose a sort ofdiscipline on the projects that maybe
some public sector projects don't have.
And also offload risk, from prettylimited, public sector budgets.
But at the same time, you know, maybe,tying in government's long term interest
to support the project, to make thenecessary infrastructure link ups.
You know, things like roads power, andto provide long term policy stability.
(13:54):
And you can structure these projectsin such a way that it's mutually
advantageous over the long term.
But I do think that is an importantconcern, especially for the types
of projects that are pursuing a moreadvanced type of special jurisdiction,
where more of that governing authorityis devolved to a local level.
If you're talking abouta basic set of things.
Like maybe just urban planning orthe types of very light touch things
(14:17):
in your standard industrial park.
So maybe you're talking about some taxconcessions, but things that are basically
in statute that, aren't being, implementedor tried on the ground that's a pretty
tried and true method that makes anextension of what's already been done,
in a lot of these countries where Ido think it becomes more challenging.
It is when you get into the more advanceddevolution of authority, not just to do.
(14:39):
Okay.
Here's what the law says this jurisdictioncan do, but rather here are the
powers that the special jurisdictionhas to make its own decisions.
That's where it becomes tricky.
I was going to say, Jeff,it takes two to dance.
And so there's also the risk ofthe private sector investing and
the concern of sovereign risk that.
(15:01):
They might, something might,drastic might happen and they
might lose their investment.
So there, there's also thatto balance up, isn't there?
We were seeing this one example of thissaga play out in in Honduras right now
about a decade ago, Honduras passeda form of charter cities legislation
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under under a previous government, thesort of current, you know, very sort
of left wing government didn't likeit and campaigned on repealing it.
And that's what they did.
And it's stuck been stuck in thislegal constitutional limbo, for a few
years now, where the sort of privateprojects are taking the government's
international arbitration becausethey say the government violated,
(15:43):
you know, the legal stabilityarrangements that were in the law.
We'll see how it all shakes out.
But I do think it is a good exampleof how, if there's not that sort
of long term alignment, that thesetypes of projects can be tricky.
I will say that that is 1 reasonwhy I'm just as a general rule, a
little more bullish on, Africa andsome other regions for these types
(16:05):
of projects, as opposed to LatinAmerica, just because the, the sort of.
The wild left right swings in sort ofthe political culture and in a place
like on Honduras doesn't quite existin the same way in a lot of the places
where we're spending more of our time.
So they come with their own challenges,of course, everywhere it does.
But I do think there are reasons tobe optimistic, that a framework, a
(16:27):
similar framework to what was deployedin Honduras, if deployed elsewhere,
might not face the same risks.
So I think it's one of thosethings where I think it really is,
it's a country by country basis.
How committed is the government?
What are the politics like?
Is the local community?
How well bought in is the local community?
(16:47):
In and around where a projectis going to be, right?
That can either be, depending on how you,you know, conduct the project, right?
They can either be your biggest alliesand supporters, or be the people most
upset, by the project, as is the case withany large scale You know, infrastructure
project, if you're doing a highwayor anything, right, there's there,
(17:09):
depending on how you approach it.
You can make friends or enemies.
So I think that that's something that alot of projects, probably could be more
cautious about and more thoughtful about.
But I do think it's somethingthat they're taking into account,
especially as they see examples.
Now Jeff, the urbanization of theGlobal South is happening at an
unprecedented pace with around 200new cities being built, 78 million
(17:29):
people moving to urban areas each year.
How long is this process expectedto take and what challenges do you
think arise from such rapid change?
So this, this is somethingthat's going to play out.
Um, you throughout this century.
If you look at, you can have an argumentabout how reliable these projections are.
Um, but if you look at some of thepopulation projections for cities, up to
(17:54):
2100, all of the largest cities in theworld by far, they'll be in South Asia.
They'll be in Africa.
And we're talking, In some cases,40, 50, 60, 70 or more million
people, in one city, assumingthose projections are right.
And these are cities thatare generally building.
There's a dynamic from a World Bankreport that we like, it's called
(18:15):
pancake building cities that arepancakes versus pyramids, right?
Are you building up and vertically andwith infill or are you sprawling outwards?
And virtually all of the cities.
That we're kind of talkingabout in these discussions.
They're almost all to a rule.
Sprawling outwards.
And there are there already.
Most are at a point.
Where that kind of urban growth in theseareas are so large, and it's so difficult
(18:39):
to get from, you know, just one placeto another, is really a huge economic
disadvantage, if you can only get to avery limited pool, say, of available jobs
within a reasonable commute, from yourhome, and whether that's in the city.
On foot, bike, bus, however itis, the people get somewhere.
The extent that you can havecustomers, that you can find a
(19:02):
job within a reasonable time fromhome, is really a limiting factor.
This is something that maybe yourlisteners will know, Alain Berteau's,
excellent book, Order Without Design.
This is a point that he makes there.
These cities are completelyunprepared, to grow like this.
At these rates for that long.
This is also something that even as,countries say, like India and others
(19:23):
hit peak population and start to declineand start to age, the urbanization is
still going to continue because you'restill going to have, rural to urban
migration that's going to continue asrural areas continue to hollow out.
And that's kind of just seems to be a,that's sort of the future, at least for
the time being for, rural areas worldwide.
(19:44):
Is an exodus to cities.
And even, probably amongsecondary cities, and sort of
peri urban areas as well, right?
You're still gonna have this migration,to the biggest job centers to the
most important cities economically.
So, even as, you know, certaindemographic challenges, maybe slow down
or change, the urbanization specifically.
(20:04):
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Jeff, I'm intrigued, you've explained thepush pull of cities and rural really well,
but you were talking about the, the percapita wealth of the new residents isn't
high in the, these new sprawling cities.
(20:46):
And you talked a bit about low costhousing, you know, development, that
must be a fascinating area of research,sort of matching the housing and the
services to the ability to pay or to fund.
Can you talk a littlebit about that, please?
Sure.
So a lot of the city projects outthere, like I said before, they're
(21:09):
targeting this emergent middle class.
Because it is genuinely hard tobuild housing in a formal way.
Housing that is fullyserviced and completed.
It has the kind of amenitiesthat residents want.
It's really hard toget that Type of thing.
Even if we're talking aboutjust say a one bedroom flat.
Um, but it's really hard to getthat down to a to a price point.
(21:32):
Or so the average person off the street inone of these cities can can afford that.
Although just because it's notjust because it's hard, though,
it doesn't mean it's impossible.
And some of the partners that we've workedwith, in Malawi and elsewhere have been
working, you know, really diligentlyon providing housing, that, that folks
on the ground, can actually afford.
(21:52):
It's basic, right?
But it is sort of, itis, it is private, right?
There are no mortgage marketsin most of these places.
But it is at a level where peoplecan, actually afford to pay for it,
and, and operating these sort ofparallel structures and in the place
of mortgages, and actually afford thatwhen you're earning, a family's earning
100 a month or something like that.
(22:15):
So it can be done.
The question is, how many developerscan sort of figure out how to do that.
So like I said, we, we havea partner in Malawi with a
group called small farm cities.
Who's who sort of figured that out, andthey're doing sort of agro industrial,
and white industry clusters there.
And they're at that kindof price point for housing.
(22:35):
Most city projects are not even onesthat are technically affordable.
Very few are getting down to that level,but that's something that we're trying
to engage more projects with and make thepoint that when we're talking about urban
expansion planning, you don't necessarilyneed to do everything in advance.
Okay, here's here's the here'sa grid, with demarcated plots.
(22:58):
Here's arterial roadswhere they're going to go.
Even just simple things like that tobring some order, to sort of urban
expansion, even when it's still istechnically informal, can can do a lot
to make providing the housing and thenalso the infrastructure, more cost
effective, because it's incrediblyexpensive to have to retrofit, it.
Infrastructure and utilities inan already settled informal area.
(23:20):
It's multiple times the cost,
Jeff, what's the alternative?
I mean, what's actually happeningnow in 95 percent of the cases.
With the new dwellers inthis in these mega cities,
it's for the for the most part.
It's just the sort ofunplanned outward sprawl.
The sort of periphery, continues togrow in some cases, the sum of that
(23:44):
is being captured in slightly moreproactive, urban expansion planning.
But the vast majority is just unplanned,
So basically Hutz, sort of Hutz apartment,I mean, what sort of, can you just
describe?
Yeah, mostly self built,self built over time.
Yeah, in formal.
So yeah, uh, you know, 10.
Tent shacks would depending onwhat's available where you are.
(24:07):
But yeah, that kind of thingis the vast majority of this.
This organization looks like,although slums do tend to
differ from country to country.
So in some cases, that'smore of the model.
Um, of course, famously in,, someplaces like, like India, right?
They, they have these massive slumsthat are, they are more vertical, um,
(24:27):
you know, multi story type things.
Um, but like in most ofAfrica, it's, largely, small
structures that are self built.
Jeff, we've spoken about the challengesfor institutional reform in some
of these cities, particularly whencoming in to try and retrofit cities.
(24:47):
Have there been any pastattempts at planned cities or
charter cities that have failed?
And if so, could you talkto some of those examples?
Sure.
So, a lot of people will befamiliar with the sort of quote
unquote ghost cities, in, China.
I think personally it's a littlebit of an overblown narrative and
(25:08):
sometimes what you'll see described asa ghost city has filled in over time.
There's a famous quote unquote subwayto nowhere in Chongqing that was famous
and then a couple of years later.
The thriving area had built up around it.
So there are some of those caseswhere there is genuine sort of
overbuilding, especially in a placelike China, where the sort of state
(25:31):
is intertwined so much with business,so your typical market discipline
maybe doesn't necessarily apply.
I think failed is, iskind of a sliding scale.
So there are a lot of projectswhere something gets done, something
gets built, and they don't finishit, or it attracts some residents,
but doesn't quite hit its target.
(25:52):
Or maybe starts then stops for a while,and then maybe eventually picks back up.
And there's a number of these,so like Forest City in Malaysia.
Just north of Singapore is one that'skind of famous, for sort of low occupancy.
Despite being built out prettyextensively, echo Atlantic in Nigeria
(26:14):
is another famous one, that was goingto be sort of wildly expensive, for the
Nigerian market, right on Victoria Island,right across from the core of Lagos.
I think it's still ongoing, butprogress has been slow setting aside
the kind of mismatch between thesort of population and the price
(26:35):
point in which is being built.
So you can find lots ofthese, throughout the world.
It can often be hardactually just to find.
Accurate and up to dateinformation, on these.
So, for example, in South Korea,they built a new city called
Songdo on reclaimed land off thecoast of Incheon, and this is
(26:55):
built up over the past 20 years.
And it hasn't hit allof its original targets.
But if you go back 56 years,you'll find these stories where,
like, This place is empty andlonely, like, what's going on here?
And of course now it's filled in more,but that's not like an interesting story.
So, a lot of these projects, it's just,they have ambitious targets, they don't
(27:17):
hit them, but they do fill in over time.
So, yeah, failure is kind ofa sliding scale, I would say.
For a lot of these, atleast, usually something gets
built, somebody lives there.
They just don't always hit their,for one reason or another, they don't
always hit their, original objectives,which are often quite ambitious.
(27:37):
Jeff, there's always knockers outthere, and, the press loves a bad story.
you mentioned China, that that'shad enormous success with some
of its policy experimentation andlifting say 800 million people out
of poverty since 1980, incredible.
And so what can others learnfrom China, both good and bad?
And I love this saying by DengXiaoping, famously said, it doesn't
(28:03):
matter whether a cat is black orwhite, as long as it catches mice.
How does this pragmatic approachapply to your role in city making?
And Do you like the quote?
I do.
he also, there's also another, denquote that says, we, we have to cross
the river by feeling the stones,which kind of gets at a similar ethos.
(28:24):
China is interesting, is,is an interesting example.
because right starting starting inthe eighties, you have this, this
opening up this liberalization.
and a big part of that is this sortof release of all of this pent up,
demand for rural to urban migration.
So, this kind of migration wassort of under Mao, had, had
been sort of heavily restricted.
(28:45):
but in 1980, starting inShenzhen and, three other.
cities in southern coastal China.
they established special economic zones.
over 300 something squarekilometers, comprises the shenzhen.
So we're talking about city size zones.
Where policy was dictated, not fromBeijing, but by local officials,
(29:05):
and they were given broad leewayto experiment to figure things out.
Of course, when your sort of startingpoint, is, you know, in the aftermath
of the Great Leap Forward and theCultural Revolution, right, there's
a lot of low hanging fruit, topick, you know, liberalizing in a
communist society like 1980s China.
but it's interesting, and Ithink the lessons are broadly
applicable to new contexts.
(29:27):
where they were able to sortof pioneer new policies.
If something worked, scale itup, and keep going with it.
If something doesn't work, okay, stop.
Let's try something else, anduse those laboratories to then.
Okay.
they did this in Shenzhen.
it worked well.
So they had their 1st, land markets, 1st,labor markets, like, very basic things.
started out there and then we'rescaling up throughout the rest of
(29:48):
China based on those experiments.
So I think that there's sort of 2parallels to sort of rapidly urbanizing
and developing countries today thatyou could draw from that example.
So, 1 is on urbanization.
you know, it's not exactlyanalogous in that, right?
the urbanization in China was kind of.
at least partially responding to,easing of the sort of restrictions.
(30:10):
And I think Shenzhen in particularbenefited from being next to Hong Kong.
So that's another part of the story.
but I think the sort of scale ofurbanization that happened and
the sort of transformative power.
Of large scale urbanizationwhen it's employed productively.
but shows I think whatis what is possible.
And then the 2nd bit is on theexperimentation and figuring out what
works from a governance point of view.
(30:31):
There's a lot of power in saying, okay.
You know, in this limited geographic area,under these rules under these conditions,
within this policy area, right?
you can try things out and figureout ways to do something better.
and then you can takethat and scale that up.
So those are sort of the 2 core lessons.
I think for charter cities.
is that urbanization, ifimplemented, well, can be an
(30:55):
incredibly productive force.
for lifting people out of poverty.
and the second is that, allowing forpolicy experimentation for novel, novel
governance mechanisms, can do the same.
And, you know, it bearsacknowledging, right?
late 20th century China is a uniquesetting, in its own time and place.
that's different from say,Nigeria or India today.
(31:16):
Right.
that goes without saying, but I thinkthose sort of lessons are broadly
applicable to new context, even if thesituations aren't completely identical.
Jeff, what about infrastructure provision?
How do they keep pace withsuch rapid urban growth?
And what are the challenges interms of infrastructure provision?
(31:36):
they don't.
so this is part of thestory of the sprawl.
the roads, water systems, powersystems especially electricity.
just isn't being deployed, at the scalenecessary to provide formal options,
for people who are moving to cities.
so you have this informality, that justdominates, and so these communities
(31:57):
typically are not serviced, or ifthey are, it's in a very limited way.
and then it costs a lot of moneyto be able to go back into an area.
once people have settled and, maybe youcan do the main arterials easily enough.
in an unplanned settlement, right?
It's going to be really difficultto sort of pave any other roads.
it's gonna be very difficultto bring in pipe water.
(32:18):
It's gonna be very difficult, to deploypower transmission and distribution.
and that goes all the way downfrom sort of the big pieces of
critical infrastructure, downto, individual household hookups.
And then that doesn't evenget into the questions of.
how do you charge for usage?
So in a lot of places, you can see,kind of comical, pictures of, power
(32:40):
wires and these kind of things, we'rejust, you know, everybody's tapping in,
Tapping into the existing network.
It's totally unmetered and unmonitored.
and it's like, horribly inefficient.
but at the same time, if you try tointroduce, you know, user charges
and pricing mechanisms, it oftengets met, with a lot of resistance.
But you need revenue generationto be able to provide the
(33:01):
services in the first place.
So you're, you're stuck inthis horrible feedback loop.
or even when you try to deploy theseservices, at a wider scale and into new
areas, just from, from top to bottom,there are all of these challenges that
make it, really difficult, despiteall of the growing interest from,
from all, you know, the developmentfinance institutions, from, from, from
commercial banks, et cetera, who wantto finance infrastructure projects.
(33:24):
Thanks.
I want to ask you about the expectedneed for new energy for these cities.
What's the scale, but before I,before you answer that, it must be,
if you're in, I'm putting myself asa slum dweller in an African city, I
haven't got tenure of where I live,have I, I mean, and so therefore my
(33:44):
commitment to my local area, if Iknow I, you know, The government could
turn up with a bulldozer next weekend.
All my stuff has to go, thenthere's not the stability.
There's not the buying or ownership.
Can you talk about that?
And then just give us a verybrief, you know, like how we
need reliable, affordable,abundant energy in these places.
(34:07):
What's the scale?
So two different questions.
Sorry, we'd Twitter, Twitter type answers.
No, no, no.
so, so on, on informality.
there's been a big effort in the past,I don't know, 20, 30 plus years, to,
to do land titling, and to get morepeople with, with proper, proper title
(34:27):
for, for the land that they're on.
you know, this was an especially big fad.
around the turn of the century, there'sa, this is, this is Hernando de Soto's
argument, as like the, like the, theone neat trick to, to solve poverty.
And it didn't quite work out thatway, but there's still a lot of
these types of, titling and sortof land right projects ongoing.
and it's important work becauseyou can borrow against it.
(34:48):
it allows you to operate in theformal economy a little bit more.
but yeah, that insecurityis a big problem.
and there's, yeah, for those types ofcommunities, there's nothing stopping.
well, sometimes there ends up being,you know, community pushback and
resistance and those kind of things.
But in a lot of places wherethe government can and does.
(35:10):
Come in and clear up those communities.
right.
That's often very unfortunatebecause, even if they have their
problems, they are often stillsort of functional communities.
with sort of in the absence of thestate, other mechanisms can come in and
they're not perfect, but they do work.
the flip side, of course, of thatis, unfortunately, sometimes there
is infrastructure that you reallyneed for a city to function,
(35:33):
and it has to go somewhere.
So, that's one of the things forrenew city projects, that is like
one of the absolute, worst things youcould try to do is just acquire land.
you know, through through through throughevident domain where people are living,
(35:53):
or without without compensation in someway that sets off a city project or any
big infrastructure project off on, youknow, really negative footing when you
could have been done, could have beendone with allies, these land tenure
issues vary from country to country.
it's like famously nightmarish in India,to try to assemble land, for, a factory
project or an infrastructure project orsomething like that, because the way the
(36:16):
land, sort of climate system, throughfamilies and all that works there.
Some places are moredifficult than others.
but yeah, it's a difficult problem whenthere's nothing really stopping the
next person just from coming along.
and setting up their little house,just, you know, keep adding one,
keep pushing things further out.
it's really difficult to manage.
(36:37):
yeah, one,
the energy, yep.
On energy.
So this is probably one of the singlemost important things, that's holding
back a lot of these economies.
there's a stat, that I think likethe average person in, Sub Saharan
Africa consumes less electricityin a year than my refrigerator
upstairs does, which is insane.
the sort of gulf between, powerconsumed in, high income productive
(37:00):
economies and low income unproductiveeconomies is absolutely massive.
and there's obviously a lot ofinterest from the DFIs, from others.
They want to do power projects.
and there has been this sort of, emerging,view from some corners of, the policy
sphere or the global development spherethat, we shouldn't do, gas projects or
other things that aren't, renewablesor solar and that kind of thing.
(37:23):
and I think that this is areally wrong head of view that's.
causing a lot of people to be poor fora lot longer than they would need to
be, these countries, the electricity isso limited, so unreliable, there really
needs to be just much more generation,just a much higher baseline level of
power, you know, maybe not coal, right.
That has a lot of.
(37:43):
pretty bad health effects thatmake the trade offs pretty bad.
But basically any other form of powergeneration, these places need it.
And if they have the resources locallyto be able to do oil fired plants,
gas powered plants, if they havethe right conditions to do solar,
to do wind, I think they really needall of the above strategy, to be
(38:04):
able to build out their networks.
and then there's also potentialfor some decentralized solutions as
well, like small local solar gridsand rooftop and that kind of stuff.
I think that that becomesdifficult to scale There are
advantages to building out a properfunctional national electric grid.
but I think really the golf andenergy usage and the pervasiveness
(38:25):
of energy poverty in these placesis just so great that I think you
really do need and all of the abovestrategy and you need it quickly.
Jeff, new cities, new rules.
What does this phrase mean in practice?
And how do the governance models of newcities challenge traditional city making?
(38:48):
Sure, so when we say new cities, newrules, this gets at the idea, that I
spoke at before about applying someform of new and or more innovative
governance over a limited geographic area.
and so you can think about thiskind of again, on, a sliding scale.
you could have a sort of maximally.
Autonomous charter citythat basically handles.
(39:11):
Everything, right?
You could go all the way up to thedoorstep of being its own, almost
sovereign entity or something like that.
and you could go all the way theother direction and you have the most
basic industrial park where okay,maybe you've got a tax exemption or
2 and most projects are going to fallsomewhere in the middle of that where
(39:33):
they've got some degree of autonomy.
better regulations for thatapply to the formal economy.
these are the productive,industries that are doing exporting.
This is professional services, right?
All of the activities that characterize,the, economic activity that is
linked into the formal economy.
global and regional trade.
these, generate large scale employment,and ultimately lift people out of poverty.
(39:56):
So there's that macro level view, if youwill, but then there's also on the more
micro level, where it shouldn't cost.
The average person off the streetto if they wanted to operate
a business, formally, right?
It shouldn't have to cost them ahuge share of their annual income
just to register that business.
(40:16):
it shouldn't take, you know,knowing the right guy and
some bribes or months on end.
just to get approved to operate thatbusiness or to get the permit you need
or pay your taxes or whatever it is,just the the barriers to operating
in the formal economy for mostbusinesses that are really large scale
or or or foreign, in these places.
(40:37):
It's just really high.
And so informality persists.
So if you can create some new structuresthat really streamline that, and make
it very easy to do business, veryeasy to interface with government,
very easy for government or a privateoperator to provide services, for
residents and make all of that sortof as light touch, you know, with the
(41:00):
appropriate oversight, as possible.
You can create the conditions where.
business formation and investment bothdomestic and foreign, is more feasible.
You can concentrate it withina specific geographic area.
So you get the benefits ofagglomeration, of having, particular
industry and or business, and thenits suppliers they wanna locate in
(41:22):
or near that jurisdiction, and youcreate these kind of knock on effects.
so, there's location argumentsas well of why you would want to
concentrate some of this activity.
rather than having itbe, widely dispersed.
and just public sector reform isn'tjust a developing country thing.
public sector reform,is hard to do anywhere.
right.
There's lots of.
(41:42):
In trans interests, that, have a reasonto enjoy the public policy status quo.
there are just sort of incentivearguments for folks in government, often
just to keep things the way they are.
there's just the.
Stasis.
that sets in from there being justa volume of things to deal with.
maybe, doge here in the US is showing oneapproach to maybe a sledgehammer approach,
(42:04):
but I don't think you have to do that.
these types of settings, you cansort of target these high leverage
areas, get permission to try out anddo some new things and experiment.
created an environmentand operating environment.
That's better for everyone.
ideally government will seethat and scale it up over time,
elsewhere throughout the country.
I, you know, the, the sort oflongterm vision is that, you know,
(42:26):
I'd say after a few decades, ideallyyou wouldn't need a charter city,
anymore if successful, right.
Those reforms could be scaled up.
the whole country environment,operates like that.
Geoff, I keep thinking Singapore,Singapore, Singapore, when you mention
its growth from being a very poor place.
Now we're coming towards the end ofthe podcast, but before we get to your
(42:49):
podcast, can you tell us very brieflya bit about the freedom cities in
the States that are sort of, Come up
sure.
So in, 2023 in a campaign speech,Donald Trump, one of the ideas that
was thrown out there, was the ideaof using federal land, to build
(43:09):
new cities in the United States.
both to expand housingoptions and affordability.
and also to, pursue the developmentof advanced technologies.
there's lots of federal land in theUnited States, especially out west.
in some states like Nevada,it's often a majority.
of the land when we talk about federalland, this often conjures up the image
(43:30):
of national parks and that kind of stuff.
but there's actually lots of land thatis not being used for anything at all,
or is on the periphery of existing builtup areas you could build 10 sizable
new cities, using U. S. federal landwithout disturbing any of the national
parks or any of that, C. C. I. Isworking with, various other partners
to engage both the administrationand Congress, to pursue, legislation
(43:54):
and implementation that would allow.
for the government to establish,freedom cities using federal land
or, also looking at allowing stateland or private land, to be opted in,
which would obviously expand the setof possibilities, of where you could
build something like this by, by a lot.
But so there, and there's sort oftwo approaches, that that folks are
looking at, with freedom cities.
(44:14):
one, is housing affordability.
and housing production.
so there's some people who are lookingat this idea of freedom cities really
just as a way to unlock federalland for new housing development.
and you can look on maps and thenwe have some partners that are
doing this and basically mappingout, various cities out west.
here's their current footprint.
Here's where that footprint abuts, parcelsof federal land, and how you could,
(44:39):
in a phased way, unlock some of thatland, to continue building housing in
those places, especially in, California,this could be something that could be
really impactful, because housing is soexpensive, and then a second approach
is closer to like a special economiczone or special jurisdiction approach.
Where the housing and the sort of urbanurban development part is important, but
(45:01):
also includes includes some regulatorytargeted regulatory relief, especially
surrounding emerging technologies.
So, you could use theseareas to within this area.
We're going to allow certain
expedited approvals.
Or, or say more limited, time durationfor trials for in,, say, biotech and
(45:26):
biomedicine, autonomous vehicles,energy projects, all these kind
of things you can create sort ofa targeted regulatory environment.
where it's easy to research, developand deploy these new technologies and
infrastructure, in a way that wouldbe much less costly, and much more
quick, than you could just operating,generally in the United States.
(45:49):
and so there's a lot of possibilities,with what you could do, using federal
land or incorporating, privateland into this type of regime.
Obviously, the United States doesn'tface quite the same, urbanization,
rapid urbanization pressures.
We're as urbanized as we're going to getany rural urban shifts or urban shifts.
it's in the global sense.
It's all marginal.
but obviously, new housing developmentis sort of highly restricted,
(46:10):
especially in the most important jobmarkets, the centers of innovation.
So, New York, San Francisco, and if youcould just use federal land to unlock,
say, in the San Francisco Bay Area,new land for housing, right there.
there's potential hugegains from doing that.
And there's also interesting sites.
that could be used like abandonedmilitary bases that are no longer in use.
(46:32):
sites like that in particular, Ithink are particularly attractive.
we're talking about land that hasalready been developed in some form, but
it's now just sitting there uselessly.
it usually is in relative proximity tosome kind of existing area built up area.
so there's a lot of advantages why youwould want to build, in a place like
That, that would be silly, but there's,like, for example, there's a, out of
function military base just outsideof, Denver, Colorado, that's a pretty
(46:56):
large portion of parcel of land.
You could very easily redevelop that,and build lots of housing and target
a specific industry or industries.
to shut up, set up shopin that jurisdiction.
So we'll see what happens overthe next, I don't know, 18 months.
We're going to try to make this a reality.
And, you know, we'll see if thisis something that Congress and the
(47:18):
administration wants to, wants to pursue.
And we're optimistic.
You run a podcast on these topics.
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
And what sort of insights have you gained?
Sure.
so in addition to our, researchblogs, all the other things we do,
(47:39):
we have the Charter Cities podcast.
we bring on a range of experts in,from, cities, both kind of from
an academic sense, but also sortof practical, on the ground sense.
so with urban planners,city developers themselves.
and try to capture sort ofall facets of this ecosystem.
what folks are working on, why they'rebuilding what they're building, what
(48:01):
some of their challenges have been.
What their successes have been, andI think it's really useful to sort of
collect this information, collect thesestories, from the people who are both
studying these topics, but also actuallydoing the thing, and that can inform
not only what we're doing when we engagewith our research, but are engaged with
a partner in government or developer,but also the folks in that ecosystem who
(48:24):
are listening, and really just tryingto build up that base of knowledge.
for the benefit of the broader ecosystem.
We'll have all that on ourepisode notes, Jeff, your podcast
and the YouTube channel and thenewsletter will have all the things.
So we're moving to podcastextra or culture corner.
Have you got something you canrecommend to our listeners that
(48:45):
you've read, watched, experiencedlately that might be of interest?
Sure.
so we have an in house, staffbook club that meets, every month
or every other month at CCI.
And, one of our most recent, books wasreally a really interesting study of
a unique, experiment in governance.
It was called OutsourcingEmpire by Andrew Phillips and J.
C. Sharman.
(49:05):
So this is a deep dive on the British EastIndia Company, Dutch East India Company.
and some of the other European colonialcorporations that were established,
in the, 16th, 17th, 18th century whythey were established, why they were
so successful at, going as sort ofconquest, how they did it, why they
(49:25):
did it, but then also why they failed.
what they did, in these places,why they ultimately failed.
so it's a really interesting look fromboth the rise and the fall, and the
effects on the ground and the places.
the places where, wherethese, these, these sort of
imperial corporations worked.
and it's a really sort of fascinatingperspective into what, you know, the sort
of 18th century world and 19th centuryworld, looked like and was governed, in
(49:49):
a way that we, I think we often don'tthink about, but it's had profound
effects, obviously for the countriesin which these entities operated.
places like India, obviously huge,lasting effects from this sort of
form of colonization, that I thinkinforms a lot of, our understanding
of how these places operate today andsort of what some of their legacies
that they have to contend with are.
So a really fascinating dive
(50:11):
We'll have that on our episodenotes and Jess, your podcast extra.
I'm about five years behind thetimes here, Paige and Jeff, but I've
just started watching Ted Lasso,which I'm thoroughly enjoying.
I haven't watched it, Jess.
It's won a lot of awards and,um, I remember hearing about it
years ago and I think someonetold me briefly what it was about.
(50:34):
And I was like, nah,it's not really my thing.
It's great.
I'm loving it.
Have you seen it?
My wife and I also justwatched it for the first time.
Did
you enjoy it?
Yes.
it was fun.
How about you Pete?
Well, I've got one question for you, Jess.
How's your tennis
going, I have done a couple of lessonsrecently, which has been really
good for my, I was going to say myform, but I'd say my lack of form.
(50:56):
So I think my form is beginning.
in my first lesson, you'll enjoy this,Pete, I, I went in quite cocky, you know,
I can, I can hit a ball, I'm okay at this.
And he, the, the instructor was givingme some tips on my, on my backhand and
I did a double backhand and I hit himsquare in the neck with a tennis ball.
(51:20):
It's all about power Jess.
And he did that, you know, thatnoise that people do and they get
sort of winded and, I was mortified.
Yeah.
I didn't kill him, but I don'tknow if I can go back now.
Jeff underneath this, de, youknow, veneer, there's a beast in
chest so I'm not surprised by that.
But, my podcast extra is, abeautiful book called Fred
(51:42):
Williams, Diaries, 1963 to 1970.
Fred Williams was one ofAustralia's great landscape
painters, and he kept a meticulous.
And, I actually know hisdaughter, not very well, but
she's mentioned in the book.
the diary, starts off writing abouthis technique, how he can improve it.
And he talks about paintings,which this beautiful book, it
(52:04):
weighs about five kilos, but it'sgot the paintings reproduced.
he talks about the art world.
He talks about.
how his technique is eitherworking or not working.
But at the end of each year in thesediaries, he reviews his year and
he sets out what he wants to do.
But, Jeff, do you keep a diary?
(52:24):
I do not.
Okay.
Jeff, uh, Jeff, do you keep a diary?
Not since I was about 14.
I'd love to read that one.
Anyway,
it's, it's probably people won't beable to get it, but because it's sort
of an Australian production and justreading someone's diaries and there's
such dedication to their craft or.
(52:47):
art and just this senseof reflection about what's
working and what's not working.
So
maybe we need to start taking diariesand making diaries about the podcast,
Pete, so we can do reflections eachyear on what we need to improve on.
Well, the Netflix seriesis going to be fantastic.
It is going to be fantastic.
Jeff, thanks so much for beingpart of, planning exchange and
we'll have a full episode notes.
(53:08):
And thank you for, forbeing such a great guest.
Thank you for having me.
I'm going to have to pass ondiaries of, Fred Williams.
I found it on Amazon and, it'sabout 140 Australian dollars.
Oh, wow.
So
I might, I might pass, Imight be passing on that one.
How
much of that is shipping?
And, That's without shipping.
It was five kilos.
Yeah.
(53:28):
Jeff, your life will beenriched if you do, and read it.
Anyway, thanks again foryour, for everything.
Thanks for
having me.
Thanks for listening.
If you would like to hear more of ourpodcasts, hit the follow button on Spotify
or the like button on SoundCloud orthe subscribe button in Apple podcasts.
Please also visit our Instagrampage, LinkedIn or website for behind
(53:50):
the scenes footage of our podcastsand to get the latest on upcoming
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If you have any suggestions orfeedback, please get in touch via
our social media channels or byemailing planningxchangeatgmail.
com.
This podcast is supported by VPLA.
Victorian PlanningEnvironmental Law Association.
Welcome to the Planning Exchangewhere we interview built environment
professionals who are doinginteresting work beyond the ordinary.
I'm Jess Noonan and I'm joinedby my colleague Peter Jewell.
we're speaking with Geoffrey Mason.
He's the head of policy atCharter Cities Institute.
(00:20):
He joined CCI as a researcher in2019, and his research interests
include urban economics, structuraltransformation, Special Economic
Zones and Technology Ecosystems.
He's worked on policy advisory projectsin Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and
Honduras, amongst other countries.
Prior to joining the Charter CitiesInstitute, Jeffrey worked as an MA
(00:43):
Fellow at George Mason University.
He holds a BA in Economics from theUniversity of Maryland and an MA in
Economics from George Mason University.
Welcome to the show, Jeff.
Thanks for having me, Peterand Jessica, glad to be here.
Now, can you tell uswhat is a Charter City?
So, in short, a charter city isa new city with better rules.
(01:07):
In the 21st century, rapidurbanization at a massive scale
is really the defining challenge.
For much of the developingworld, especially sub Saharan
Africa, South Asia and elsewhere.
The scale of this urbanization, additionalbillions of new urban residents, across
these countries and in just a fewdecades, that's a really hard problem
(01:28):
for governments to try to solve, in termsof infrastructure, provision, service
delivery, in terms of economies toprovide the growth necessary to support
that kind of urbanization, withoutendless economically unproductive sprawl.
So we think that, building masterplan cities, new cities in the
growth path of existing cities.
(01:50):
Can help capture some of that urbanizationin a way that is ultimately more
productive, more primed for growth, andmore prepared for rapid urban expansion.
And then if you're doing, these sort ofmaster planned, city projects that it
makes a lot of sense to pair them, withthe kind of innovations and governance.
That are typically used in specialeconomic zones, which is typically
(02:12):
applied to, like, an industrial parksetting, but is increasingly being
applied to new and innovative contexts.
So you can create the sort of newurban hub to focus infrastructure,
investment, focus, job creation,focus, service delivery.
All these types of things, and pair thatwith reforms to governance, to promote
(02:34):
growth, to build state capacity, whenit might be difficult or, politically
difficult or infeasible to say, dofull scale reforms at a national level.
Some of those things can make adifference in terms of effective
government and economic growth.
You can start out on a smallerscale in a limited geographic area.
And so we focus primarily, I'm sorry.
(02:54):
I was just going to say to paint apicture, Jeff, have you got an example of
an existing charter city or a city thatyou've worked on that you could talk to?
Sure.
One good example of somethinglike a charter city.
Would be tattoo city in Nairobi, Kenya.
So this is a new city, privatelydeveloped city just outside of Nairobi.
(03:16):
It has status as a special economic zone.
It's building, it's taking in lotsof, investment in various industries.
It's deployed lots of infrastructure.
And it's also paired that with housing,public spaces and other uses like that.
So it combines, the,sort of economic focus.
You know, something like an industrialpark, with housing developments.
(03:38):
How big is that, Jeff?
What sort of scale are we talking?
I don't know the exact figures off thetop of my head, but they're looking at
at least a couple thousand residentsin after several years of construction.
I think their master plan is lookingat sort of tens of thousands or more.
So they're not building thatparticular project to say.
(03:58):
Accommodate a million orsomething of that scale.
But is a fairly large area,and has a lot of room to grow.
And there's projects like that, allthroughout Africa, Asia and elsewhere.
Some maybe focus on, different economicsectors through targeting, for investment.
So we're targeting differentprice points, right?
There's a sort of emerging middleclass, throughout a lot of the
(04:20):
developing world that, some ofthese projects are catering to.
Others are trying to figure out,how can we push the price point of
housing and entry, as low as possible.
Because right when you're working in.
Countries where it's, you know, 2000,3000, 4000, 5000 GDP per capita, the
lower you can push the price point, ofhousing and those kind of things, right?
The untapped market for, for that is huge.
(04:43):
So some are focusingreally large scale, right?
How can we attract.
Big industry with lots of employment,lots of jobs, and others are sort
of taking a more targeted approach.
So we're building a tech hub or a clusterfor this industry or that industry.
So there's a wide range of, ofwhat you could call a charter
city projects throughout.
Jeff, we'll talk about a bit moreabout charter cities in the scale of
(05:05):
the issue, but about you, what ledyou to your current role and what
sparked your interests in city making?
Sure.
So in short, Twitter.
While I was in grad school atthe time, a couple of years
ago, I was interested in things.
I have an economics background.
So I was interested in economicdevelopments and governance
and public policy, you know,these, these kinds of things.
(05:27):
And you had an interest in cities,but I never sort of focused on it,
in any kind of concentrated way.
It was in the same socialprofessional circle, as the charter
city's founder, Mark Lutter.
I was looking for what to work on next.
Hey, you guys, what you'redoing looks really cool.
Would love to work with you guys.
Signed up to work on a, researchproject as I was finishing school
(05:51):
and then, stayed ever since.
It's been about six years.
Since then.
I was employee number three at the time.
We started there.
And I've been, very focused on cities,especially from a global perspective.
Ever since.
We've spoken a little bit about chartercities itself and what its mission is.
How does it work?
Does charter citiesordinarily partner with.
(06:12):
Particular governments or withparticular private clients.
Is that generally how it works?
Sure.
We do a handful of things.
One is, active partnerships andtechnical assistance, and we've
done that both with governments.
We've worked with governments, ina couple of different countries.
on legislative projects.
For example, in Malawi, we worked withthe National Planning Commission there,
(06:33):
who was leading the revision of thecountry's special economic zones law.
And we worked with them to includelanguage, in that bill, which became
law at the, end of 2023, which whollyrevised their special economic zones,
but also included provisions that wouldallow, secondary cities and urban areas,
to be established as, as, as secs.
(06:54):
So that's, that's one example.
And we've, we're working on, similarengagement right now in, Zambia,
with a legislative process that'sbeen ongoing for a couple of years.
Then we also work on the private side.
For city developers.
We've done urban planning services,feasibility studies, case studies,
helping with investment detraction.
Sort of a whole suiteof, different activities.
(07:15):
And then we also engage in yourtypical, think tank type activities.
So research, public media and engagement.
And we also try to act as aconvener for this sort of strange
ecosystem, of governments and citybuilders, financial institutions.
Practitioners and experts,academics, et cetera.
And to, coalesce theconversation about new cities.
(07:36):
So
it sounds so good, Jeff.
It sounds like it's almostpure planning in lots of ways.
Just rather than what we do is,have battles about, suburban
developments in first world.
Countries and you know, height limits andthis and all the public consultation, but
your focus is largely on the global South.
A lot of people might be familiarwith that term in general sense, but
(08:00):
can you just explain it at a Twitterstyle and also why it's particularly
relevant to new city development?
And I know you've touched onthat, but if you could just talk
about what the global South means.
Yeah, that's Global South is just kind ofthe in vogue term for, I think, everybody
called developing countries 10 years ago.
(08:22):
And really, in terms of new citiesthat that's where most, most of
the projects are, I touched onbefore, the sort of urban rates
of urbanization that you're seeing
sub Saharan Africa, India and elsewhere.
It's really at a pace and a scale unlikeanything that we've seen, in the United
States, Europe or anything like that.
(08:43):
And it's also happening at a much lower.
Level of economic developmentthat occurred here, right?
I think the United States, for example,hit and I know there's you can quibble
about how countries sort of define whaturban means, but I think the United States
hit 50 percent urban in, the early 1920s,I believe, at I think the figure is maybe
(09:05):
5, 000, 7, 000, US dollars per capita.
Korea hit it in the seventies atmaybe 3500, something like that.
And you see a lot of countries now arehitting, 50 percent or more urbanization
or are well on their way to gettingthere, with simply much, much less
dynamic economies, and much lesscapable governments, to respond to that.
(09:27):
So there's both a demand sideto this, just the sheer volume
of people moving to cities.
And who need thosecities to be productive.
And then there's also a sort ofsupply side in terms of, a growing
interest, both from the privatesector and ever more so the sort of
development finance institutions.
Your Africa development banks, yourAfrica export import banks, these
(09:48):
types of groups, they're increasinglyinterested in urban projects.
And then also from governments, andthere's a long history, especially
with governments of city projects,and, you know, we can get into, there's
sort of a mixed track record there.
But yeah, it's also not something new.
I think the scale at which.
The number of city projects of varioustypes and forms are being built, and
(10:09):
financed and planned is higher, isreally taking off compared to the
past, but it's really just a sort ofextension of a much longer history.
Of these types of newcity project, efforts.
Just moving into a discussionabout the need for new cities.
In the past, governments have been themain drivers of new city development.
So thinking of capital cities likeBrasilia or Canberra, what's different
(10:33):
today and what role can or shouldprivate actors play in that space?
Sure.
Yeah, especially in themid 20th century, right?
There's a lot of examples.
And even into like, eveninto today, there's still
examples of countries who are.
Either building entirely new capitalcities, or at least, maybe, maybe
(10:53):
capital districts might be moreappropriate phrase for some of them.
Egypt is doing one.
Indonesia is another one ofnote, that's trying this, South
Korea did this a few years ago.
So those kind of effortsare still ongoing.
Even for non capital city relatedprojects, there are still a number of
public sector led, new city projects.
(11:14):
Even if they're not formally newcapitals, Senegal is doing one outside
of Dakar, for example, and they've moved,some of their, ministries out there.
The U. N. Presence in Senegalis based out of that city.
For instance, we're working with a publicprivate project in Zambia right now.
The government is interested in.
(11:35):
They're doing a new hydro project,hydro power project, and they want
to do a sort of urban extensionand zone kind of off of that.
Investment.
So that like that's anotherexample of a republic type
project that we're working on.
But yeah, there's a growingindustry, and a willingness to
finance, private led city projects.
(11:55):
Some of these projects arecoming from a more sort of
traditional real estate background.
And, you know, they sometimes it'sbasically just a housing estate.
And that's kind of on one side of things.
Maybe they start to bring in someeconomic activity beyond housing as well.
You can go the other way, andfind projects that at their core
are closer to industrial parks.
That maybe are starting to, incorporatehousing and other amenities.
(12:17):
And between those, there's this emergingproduct type of project that is a true
combination of both targeting industry,housing public space, commercial, and
that these projects are in fact bankablethat they're commercially viable.
We're seeing that.
All over the world,
Jeff, there must be some sensitivityin not wishing to challenge national
(12:42):
or local or regional sovereignty.
So it must be a very delicate measure towork in this space without with allowing
the whatever government body stillretain, well, essentially, oversight.
Is that, can you talk alittle bit about that?
(13:06):
Sure.
So most projects, that CCI works withand just as a general model that we sort
of, tend to advocate for, is to pursuesome form of public private partnership,
structure, align long term incentivesbetween private developers, Who can raise
the capital, to deploy infrastructure.
And also, come with the, advantages, ofhaving more grounded budget constraints.
(13:30):
Um, a sort of impose a sort ofdiscipline on the projects that maybe
some public sector projects don't have.
And also offload risk, from prettylimited, public sector budgets.
But at the same time, you know, maybe,tying in government's long term interest
to support the project, to make thenecessary infrastructure link ups.
You know, things like roads power, andto provide long term policy stability.
(13:54):
And you can structure these projectsin such a way that it's mutually
advantageous over the long term.
But I do think that is an importantconcern, especially for the types
of projects that are pursuing a moreadvanced type of special jurisdiction,
where more of that governing authorityis devolved to a local level.
If you're talking abouta basic set of things.
Like maybe just urban planning orthe types of very light touch things
(14:17):
in your standard industrial park.
So maybe you're talking about some taxconcessions, but things that are basically
in statute that, aren't being, implementedor tried on the ground that's a pretty
tried and true method that makes anextension of what's already been done,
in a lot of these countries where Ido think it becomes more challenging.
It is when you get into the more advanceddevolution of authority, not just to do.
(14:39):
Okay.
Here's what the law says this jurisdictioncan do, but rather here are the
powers that the special jurisdictionhas to make its own decisions.
That's where it becomes tricky.
I was going to say, Jeff,it takes two to dance.
And so there's also the risk ofthe private sector investing and
the concern of sovereign risk that.
(15:01):
They might, something might,drastic might happen and they
might lose their investment.
So there, there's also thatto balance up, isn't there?
We were seeing this one example of thissaga play out in in Honduras right now
about a decade ago, Honduras passeda form of charter cities legislation
(15:21):
under under a previous government, thesort of current, you know, very sort
of left wing government didn't likeit and campaigned on repealing it.
And that's what they did.
And it's stuck been stuck in thislegal constitutional limbo, for a few
years now, where the sort of privateprojects are taking the government's
international arbitration becausethey say the government violated,
(15:43):
you know, the legal stabilityarrangements that were in the law.
We'll see how it all shakes out.
But I do think it is a good exampleof how, if there's not that sort
of long term alignment, that thesetypes of projects can be tricky.
I will say that that is 1 reasonwhy I'm just as a general rule, a
little more bullish on, Africa andsome other regions for these types
(16:05):
of projects, as opposed to LatinAmerica, just because the, the sort of.
The wild left right swings in sort ofthe political culture and in a place
like on Honduras doesn't quite existin the same way in a lot of the places
where we're spending more of our time.
So they come with their own challenges,of course, everywhere it does.
But I do think there are reasons tobe optimistic, that a framework, a
(16:27):
similar framework to what was deployedin Honduras, if deployed elsewhere,
might not face the same risks.
So I think it's one of thosethings where I think it really is,
it's a country by country basis.
How committed is the government?
What are the politics like?
Is the local community?
How well bought in is the local community?
(16:47):
In and around where a projectis going to be, right?
That can either be, depending on how you,you know, conduct the project, right?
They can either be your biggest alliesand supporters, or be the people most
upset, by the project, as is the case withany large scale You know, infrastructure
project, if you're doing a highwayor anything, right, there's there,
(17:09):
depending on how you approach it.
You can make friends or enemies.
So I think that that's something that alot of projects, probably could be more
cautious about and more thoughtful about.
But I do think it's somethingthat they're taking into account,
especially as they see examples.
Now Jeff, the urbanization of theGlobal South is happening at an
unprecedented pace with around 200new cities being built, 78 million
(17:29):
people moving to urban areas each year.
How long is this process expectedto take and what challenges do you
think arise from such rapid change?
So this, this is somethingthat's going to play out.
Um, you throughout this century.
If you look at, you can have an argumentabout how reliable these projections are.
Um, but if you look at some of thepopulation projections for cities, up to
(17:54):
2100, all of the largest cities in theworld by far, they'll be in South Asia.
They'll be in Africa.
And we're talking, In some cases,40, 50, 60, 70 or more million
people, in one city, assumingthose projections are right.
And these are cities thatare generally building.
There's a dynamic from a World Bankreport that we like, it's called
(18:15):
pancake building cities that arepancakes versus pyramids, right?
Are you building up and vertically andwith infill or are you sprawling outwards?
And virtually all of the cities.
That we're kind of talkingabout in these discussions.
They're almost all to a rule.
Sprawling outwards.
And there are there already.
Most are at a point.
Where that kind of urban growth in theseareas are so large, and it's so difficult
(18:39):
to get from, you know, just one placeto another, is really a huge economic
disadvantage, if you can only get to avery limited pool, say, of available jobs
within a reasonable commute, from yourhome, and whether that's in the city.
On foot, bike, bus, however itis, the people get somewhere.
The extent that you can havecustomers, that you can find a
(19:02):
job within a reasonable time fromhome, is really a limiting factor.
This is something that maybe yourlisteners will know, Alain Berteau's,
excellent book, Order Without Design.
This is a point that he makes there.
These cities are completelyunprepared, to grow like this.
At these rates for that long.
This is also something that even as,countries say, like India and others
(19:23):
hit peak population and start to declineand start to age, the urbanization is
still going to continue because you'restill going to have, rural to urban
migration that's going to continue asrural areas continue to hollow out.
And that's kind of just seems to be a,that's sort of the future, at least for
the time being for, rural areas worldwide.
(19:44):
Is an exodus to cities.
And even, probably amongsecondary cities, and sort of
peri urban areas as well, right?
You're still gonna have this migration,to the biggest job centers to the
most important cities economically.
So, even as, you know, certaindemographic challenges, maybe slow down
or change, the urbanization specifically.
(20:04):
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(20:25):
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Jeff, I'm intrigued, you've explained thepush pull of cities and rural really well,
but you were talking about the, the percapita wealth of the new residents isn't
high in the, these new sprawling cities.
(20:46):
And you talked a bit about low costhousing, you know, development, that
must be a fascinating area of research,sort of matching the housing and the
services to the ability to pay or to fund.
Can you talk a littlebit about that, please?
Sure.
So a lot of the city projects outthere, like I said before, they're
(21:09):
targeting this emergent middle class.
Because it is genuinely hard tobuild housing in a formal way.
Housing that is fullyserviced and completed.
It has the kind of amenitiesthat residents want.
It's really hard toget that Type of thing.
Even if we're talking aboutjust say a one bedroom flat.
Um, but it's really hard to getthat down to a to a price point.
(21:32):
Or so the average person off the street inone of these cities can can afford that.
Although just because it's notjust because it's hard, though,
it doesn't mean it's impossible.
And some of the partners that we've workedwith, in Malawi and elsewhere have been
working, you know, really diligentlyon providing housing, that, that folks
on the ground, can actually afford.
(21:52):
It's basic, right?
But it is sort of, itis, it is private, right?
There are no mortgage marketsin most of these places.
But it is at a level where peoplecan, actually afford to pay for it,
and, and operating these sort ofparallel structures and in the place
of mortgages, and actually afford thatwhen you're earning, a family's earning
100 a month or something like that.
(22:15):
So it can be done.
The question is, how many developerscan sort of figure out how to do that.
So like I said, we, we havea partner in Malawi with a
group called small farm cities.
Who's who sort of figured that out, andthey're doing sort of agro industrial,
and white industry clusters there.
And they're at that kindof price point for housing.
(22:35):
Most city projects are not even onesthat are technically affordable.
Very few are getting down to that level,but that's something that we're trying
to engage more projects with and make thepoint that when we're talking about urban
expansion planning, you don't necessarilyneed to do everything in advance.
Okay, here's here's the here'sa grid, with demarcated plots.
(22:58):
Here's arterial roadswhere they're going to go.
Even just simple things like that tobring some order, to sort of urban
expansion, even when it's still istechnically informal, can can do a lot
to make providing the housing and thenalso the infrastructure, more cost
effective, because it's incrediblyexpensive to have to retrofit, it.
Infrastructure and utilities inan already settled informal area.
(23:20):
It's multiple times the cost,
Jeff, what's the alternative?
I mean, what's actually happeningnow in 95 percent of the cases.
With the new dwellers inthis in these mega cities,
it's for the for the most part.
It's just the sort ofunplanned outward sprawl.
The sort of periphery, continues togrow in some cases, the sum of that
(23:44):
is being captured in slightly moreproactive, urban expansion planning.
But the vast majority is just unplanned,
So basically Hutz, sort of Hutz apartment,I mean, what sort of, can you just
describe?
Yeah, mostly self built,self built over time.
Yeah, in formal.
So yeah, uh, you know, 10.
Tent shacks would depending onwhat's available where you are.
(24:07):
But yeah, that kind of thingis the vast majority of this.
This organization looks like,although slums do tend to
differ from country to country.
So in some cases, that'smore of the model.
Um, of course, famously in,, someplaces like, like India, right?
They, they have these massive slumsthat are, they are more vertical, um,
(24:27):
you know, multi story type things.
Um, but like in most ofAfrica, it's, largely, small
structures that are self built.
Jeff, we've spoken about the challengesfor institutional reform in some
of these cities, particularly whencoming in to try and retrofit cities.
(24:47):
Have there been any pastattempts at planned cities or
charter cities that have failed?
And if so, could you talkto some of those examples?
Sure.
So, a lot of people will befamiliar with the sort of quote
unquote ghost cities, in, China.
I think personally it's a littlebit of an overblown narrative and
(25:08):
sometimes what you'll see described asa ghost city has filled in over time.
There's a famous quote unquote subwayto nowhere in Chongqing that was famous
and then a couple of years later.
The thriving area had built up around it.
So there are some of those caseswhere there is genuine sort of
overbuilding, especially in a placelike China, where the sort of state
(25:31):
is intertwined so much with business,so your typical market discipline
maybe doesn't necessarily apply.
I think failed is, iskind of a sliding scale.
So there are a lot of projectswhere something gets done, something
gets built, and they don't finishit, or it attracts some residents,
but doesn't quite hit its target.
(25:52):
Or maybe starts then stops for a while,and then maybe eventually picks back up.
And there's a number of these,so like Forest City in Malaysia.
Just north of Singapore is one that'skind of famous, for sort of low occupancy.
Despite being built out prettyextensively, echo Atlantic in Nigeria
(26:14):
is another famous one, that was goingto be sort of wildly expensive, for the
Nigerian market, right on Victoria Island,right across from the core of Lagos.
I think it's still ongoing, butprogress has been slow setting aside
the kind of mismatch between thesort of population and the price
(26:35):
point in which is being built.
So you can find lots ofthese, throughout the world.
It can often be hardactually just to find.
Accurate and up to dateinformation, on these.
So, for example, in South Korea,they built a new city called
Songdo on reclaimed land off thecoast of Incheon, and this is
(26:55):
built up over the past 20 years.
And it hasn't hit allof its original targets.
But if you go back 56 years,you'll find these stories where,
like, This place is empty andlonely, like, what's going on here?
And of course now it's filled in more,but that's not like an interesting story.
So, a lot of these projects, it's just,they have ambitious targets, they don't
(27:17):
hit them, but they do fill in over time.
So, yeah, failure is kind ofa sliding scale, I would say.
For a lot of these, atleast, usually something gets
built, somebody lives there.
They just don't always hit their,for one reason or another, they don't
always hit their, original objectives,which are often quite ambitious.
(27:37):
Jeff, there's always knockers outthere, and, the press loves a bad story.
you mentioned China, that that'shad enormous success with some
of its policy experimentation andlifting say 800 million people out
of poverty since 1980, incredible.
And so what can others learnfrom China, both good and bad?
And I love this saying by DengXiaoping, famously said, it doesn't
(28:03):
matter whether a cat is black orwhite, as long as it catches mice.
How does this pragmatic approachapply to your role in city making?
And Do you like the quote?
I do.
he also, there's also another, denquote that says, we, we have to cross
the river by feeling the stones,which kind of gets at a similar ethos.
(28:24):
China is interesting, is,is an interesting example.
because right starting starting inthe eighties, you have this, this
opening up this liberalization.
and a big part of that is this sortof release of all of this pent up,
demand for rural to urban migration.
So, this kind of migration wassort of under Mao, had, had
been sort of heavily restricted.
(28:45):
but in 1980, starting inShenzhen and, three other.
cities in southern coastal China.
they established special economic zones.
over 300 something squarekilometers, comprises the shenzhen.
So we're talking about city size zones.
Where policy was dictated, not fromBeijing, but by local officials,
(29:05):
and they were given broad leewayto experiment to figure things out.
Of course, when your sort of startingpoint, is, you know, in the aftermath
of the Great Leap Forward and theCultural Revolution, right, there's
a lot of low hanging fruit, topick, you know, liberalizing in a
communist society like 1980s China.
but it's interesting, and Ithink the lessons are broadly
applicable to new contexts.
(29:27):
where they were able to sortof pioneer new policies.
If something worked, scale itup, and keep going with it.
If something doesn't work, okay, stop.
Let's try something else, anduse those laboratories to then.
Okay.
they did this in Shenzhen.
it worked well.
So they had their 1st, land markets, 1st,labor markets, like, very basic things.
started out there and then we'rescaling up throughout the rest of
(29:48):
China based on those experiments.
So I think that there's sort of 2parallels to sort of rapidly urbanizing
and developing countries today thatyou could draw from that example.
So, 1 is on urbanization.
you know, it's not exactlyanalogous in that, right?
the urbanization in China was kind of.
at least partially responding to,easing of the sort of restrictions.
(30:10):
And I think Shenzhen in particularbenefited from being next to Hong Kong.
So that's another part of the story.
but I think the sort of scale ofurbanization that happened and
the sort of transformative power.
Of large scale urbanizationwhen it's employed productively.
but shows I think whatis what is possible.
And then the 2nd bit is on theexperimentation and figuring out what
works from a governance point of view.
(30:31):
There's a lot of power in saying, okay.
You know, in this limited geographic area,under these rules under these conditions,
within this policy area, right?
you can try things out and figureout ways to do something better.
and then you can takethat and scale that up.
So those are sort of the 2 core lessons.
I think for charter cities.
is that urbanization, ifimplemented, well, can be an
(30:55):
incredibly productive force.
for lifting people out of poverty.
and the second is that, allowing forpolicy experimentation for novel, novel
governance mechanisms, can do the same.
And, you know, it bearsacknowledging, right?
late 20th century China is a uniquesetting, in its own time and place.
that's different from say,Nigeria or India today.
(31:16):
Right.
that goes without saying, but I thinkthose sort of lessons are broadly
applicable to new context, even if thesituations aren't completely identical.
Jeff, what about infrastructure provision?
How do they keep pace withsuch rapid urban growth?
And what are the challenges interms of infrastructure provision?
(31:36):
they don't.
so this is part of thestory of the sprawl.
the roads, water systems, powersystems especially electricity.
just isn't being deployed, at the scalenecessary to provide formal options,
for people who are moving to cities.
so you have this informality, that justdominates, and so these communities
(31:57):
typically are not serviced, or ifthey are, it's in a very limited way.
and then it costs a lot of moneyto be able to go back into an area.
once people have settled and, maybe youcan do the main arterials easily enough.
in an unplanned settlement, right?
It's going to be really difficultto sort of pave any other roads.
it's gonna be very difficultto bring in pipe water.
(32:18):
It's gonna be very difficult, to deploypower transmission and distribution.
and that goes all the way downfrom sort of the big pieces of
critical infrastructure, downto, individual household hookups.
And then that doesn't evenget into the questions of.
how do you charge for usage?
So in a lot of places, you can see,kind of comical, pictures of, power
(32:40):
wires and these kind of things, we'rejust, you know, everybody's tapping in,
Tapping into the existing network.
It's totally unmetered and unmonitored.
and it's like, horribly inefficient.
but at the same time, if you try tointroduce, you know, user charges
and pricing mechanisms, it oftengets met, with a lot of resistance.
But you need revenue generationto be able to provide the
(33:01):
services in the first place.
So you're, you're stuck inthis horrible feedback loop.
or even when you try to deploy theseservices, at a wider scale and into new
areas, just from, from top to bottom,there are all of these challenges that
make it, really difficult, despiteall of the growing interest from,
from all, you know, the developmentfinance institutions, from, from, from
commercial banks, et cetera, who wantto finance infrastructure projects.
(33:24):
Thanks.
I want to ask you about the expectedneed for new energy for these cities.
What's the scale, but before I,before you answer that, it must be,
if you're in, I'm putting myself asa slum dweller in an African city, I
haven't got tenure of where I live,have I, I mean, and so therefore my
(33:44):
commitment to my local area, if Iknow I, you know, The government could
turn up with a bulldozer next weekend.
All my stuff has to go, thenthere's not the stability.
There's not the buying or ownership.
Can you talk about that?
And then just give us a verybrief, you know, like how we
need reliable, affordable,abundant energy in these places.
(34:07):
What's the scale?
So two different questions.
Sorry, we'd Twitter, Twitter type answers.
No, no, no.
so, so on, on informality.
there's been a big effort in the past,I don't know, 20, 30 plus years, to,
to do land titling, and to get morepeople with, with proper, proper title
(34:27):
for, for the land that they're on.
you know, this was an especially big fad.
around the turn of the century, there'sa, this is, this is Hernando de Soto's
argument, as like the, like the, theone neat trick to, to solve poverty.
And it didn't quite work out thatway, but there's still a lot of
these types of, titling and sortof land right projects ongoing.
and it's important work becauseyou can borrow against it.
(34:48):
it allows you to operate in theformal economy a little bit more.
but yeah, that insecurityis a big problem.
and there's, yeah, for those types ofcommunities, there's nothing stopping.
well, sometimes there ends up being,you know, community pushback and
resistance and those kind of things.
But in a lot of places wherethe government can and does.
(35:10):
Come in and clear up those communities.
right.
That's often very unfortunatebecause, even if they have their
problems, they are often stillsort of functional communities.
with sort of in the absence of thestate, other mechanisms can come in and
they're not perfect, but they do work.
the flip side, of course, of thatis, unfortunately, sometimes there
is infrastructure that you reallyneed for a city to function,
(35:33):
and it has to go somewhere.
So, that's one of the things forrenew city projects, that is like
one of the absolute, worst things youcould try to do is just acquire land.
you know, through through through throughevident domain where people are living,
(35:53):
or without without compensation in someway that sets off a city project or any
big infrastructure project off on, youknow, really negative footing when you
could have been done, could have beendone with allies, these land tenure
issues vary from country to country.
it's like famously nightmarish in India,to try to assemble land, for, a factory
project or an infrastructure project orsomething like that, because the way the
(36:16):
land, sort of climate system, throughfamilies and all that works there.
Some places are moredifficult than others.
but yeah, it's a difficult problem whenthere's nothing really stopping the
next person just from coming along.
and setting up their little house,just, you know, keep adding one,
keep pushing things further out.
it's really difficult to manage.
(36:37):
yeah, one,
the energy, yep.
On energy.
So this is probably one of the singlemost important things, that's holding
back a lot of these economies.
there's a stat, that I think likethe average person in, Sub Saharan
Africa consumes less electricityin a year than my refrigerator
upstairs does, which is insane.
the sort of gulf between, powerconsumed in, high income productive
(37:00):
economies and low income unproductiveeconomies is absolutely massive.
and there's obviously a lot ofinterest from the DFIs, from others.
They want to do power projects.
and there has been this sort of, emerging,view from some corners of, the policy
sphere or the global development spherethat, we shouldn't do, gas projects or
other things that aren't, renewablesor solar and that kind of thing.
(37:23):
and I think that this is areally wrong head of view that's.
causing a lot of people to be poor fora lot longer than they would need to
be, these countries, the electricity isso limited, so unreliable, there really
needs to be just much more generation,just a much higher baseline level of
power, you know, maybe not coal, right.
That has a lot of.
(37:43):
pretty bad health effects thatmake the trade offs pretty bad.
But basically any other form of powergeneration, these places need it.
And if they have the resources locallyto be able to do oil fired plants,
gas powered plants, if they havethe right conditions to do solar,
to do wind, I think they really needall of the above strategy, to be
(38:04):
able to build out their networks.
and then there's also potentialfor some decentralized solutions as
well, like small local solar gridsand rooftop and that kind of stuff.
I think that that becomesdifficult to scale There are
advantages to building out a properfunctional national electric grid.
but I think really the golf andenergy usage and the pervasiveness
(38:25):
of energy poverty in these placesis just so great that I think you
really do need and all of the abovestrategy and you need it quickly.
Jeff, new cities, new rules.
What does this phrase mean in practice?
And how do the governance models of newcities challenge traditional city making?
(38:48):
Sure, so when we say new cities, newrules, this gets at the idea, that I
spoke at before about applying someform of new and or more innovative
governance over a limited geographic area.
and so you can think about thiskind of again, on, a sliding scale.
you could have a sort of maximally.
Autonomous charter citythat basically handles.
(39:11):
Everything, right?
You could go all the way up to thedoorstep of being its own, almost
sovereign entity or something like that.
and you could go all the way theother direction and you have the most
basic industrial park where okay,maybe you've got a tax exemption or
2 and most projects are going to fallsomewhere in the middle of that where
(39:33):
they've got some degree of autonomy.
better regulations for thatapply to the formal economy.
these are the productive,industries that are doing exporting.
This is professional services, right?
All of the activities that characterize,the, economic activity that is
linked into the formal economy.
global and regional trade.
these, generate large scale employment,and ultimately lift people out of poverty.
(39:56):
So there's that macro level view, if youwill, but then there's also on the more
micro level, where it shouldn't cost.
The average person off the streetto if they wanted to operate
a business, formally, right?
It shouldn't have to cost them ahuge share of their annual income
just to register that business.
(40:16):
it shouldn't take, you know,knowing the right guy and
some bribes or months on end.
just to get approved to operate thatbusiness or to get the permit you need
or pay your taxes or whatever it is,just the the barriers to operating
in the formal economy for mostbusinesses that are really large scale
or or or foreign, in these places.
(40:37):
It's just really high.
And so informality persists.
So if you can create some new structuresthat really streamline that, and make
it very easy to do business, veryeasy to interface with government,
very easy for government or a privateoperator to provide services, for
residents and make all of that sortof as light touch, you know, with the
(41:00):
appropriate oversight, as possible.
You can create the conditions where.
business formation and investment bothdomestic and foreign, is more feasible.
You can concentrate it withina specific geographic area.
So you get the benefits ofagglomeration, of having, particular
industry and or business, and thenits suppliers they wanna locate in
(41:22):
or near that jurisdiction, and youcreate these kind of knock on effects.
so, there's location argumentsas well of why you would want to
concentrate some of this activity.
rather than having itbe, widely dispersed.
and just public sector reform isn'tjust a developing country thing.
public sector reform,is hard to do anywhere.
right.
There's lots of.
(41:42):
In trans interests, that, have a reasonto enjoy the public policy status quo.
there are just sort of incentivearguments for folks in government, often
just to keep things the way they are.
there's just the.
Stasis.
that sets in from there being justa volume of things to deal with.
maybe, doge here in the US is showing oneapproach to maybe a sledgehammer approach,
(42:04):
but I don't think you have to do that.
these types of settings, you cansort of target these high leverage
areas, get permission to try out anddo some new things and experiment.
created an environmentand operating environment.
That's better for everyone.
ideally government will seethat and scale it up over time,
elsewhere throughout the country.
I, you know, the, the sort oflongterm vision is that, you know,
(42:26):
I'd say after a few decades, ideallyyou wouldn't need a charter city,
anymore if successful, right.
Those reforms could be scaled up.
the whole country environment,operates like that.
Geoff, I keep thinking Singapore,Singapore, Singapore, when you mention
its growth from being a very poor place.
Now we're coming towards the end ofthe podcast, but before we get to your
(42:49):
podcast, can you tell us very brieflya bit about the freedom cities in
the States that are sort of, Come up
sure.
So in, 2023 in a campaign speech,Donald Trump, one of the ideas that
was thrown out there, was the ideaof using federal land, to build
(43:09):
new cities in the United States.
both to expand housingoptions and affordability.
and also to, pursue the developmentof advanced technologies.
there's lots of federal land in theUnited States, especially out west.
in some states like Nevada,it's often a majority.
of the land when we talk about federalland, this often conjures up the image
(43:30):
of national parks and that kind of stuff.
but there's actually lots of land thatis not being used for anything at all,
or is on the periphery of existing builtup areas you could build 10 sizable
new cities, using U. S. federal landwithout disturbing any of the national
parks or any of that, C. C. I. Isworking with, various other partners
to engage both the administrationand Congress, to pursue, legislation
(43:54):
and implementation that would allow.
for the government to establish,freedom cities using federal land
or, also looking at allowing stateland or private land, to be opted in,
which would obviously expand the setof possibilities, of where you could
build something like this by, by a lot.
But so there, and there's sort oftwo approaches, that that folks are
looking at, with freedom cities.
(44:14):
one, is housing affordability.
and housing production.
so there's some people who are lookingat this idea of freedom cities really
just as a way to unlock federalland for new housing development.
and you can look on maps and thenwe have some partners that are
doing this and basically mappingout, various cities out west.
here's their current footprint.
Here's where that footprint abuts, parcelsof federal land, and how you could,
(44:39):
in a phased way, unlock some of thatland, to continue building housing in
those places, especially in, California,this could be something that could be
really impactful, because housing is soexpensive, and then a second approach
is closer to like a special economiczone or special jurisdiction approach.
Where the housing and the sort of urbanurban development part is important, but
(45:01):
also includes includes some regulatorytargeted regulatory relief, especially
surrounding emerging technologies.
So, you could use theseareas to within this area.
We're going to allow certain
expedited approvals.
Or, or say more limited, time durationfor trials for in,, say, biotech and
(45:26):
biomedicine, autonomous vehicles,energy projects, all these kind
of things you can create sort ofa targeted regulatory environment.
where it's easy to research, developand deploy these new technologies and
infrastructure, in a way that wouldbe much less costly, and much more
quick, than you could just operating,generally in the United States.
(45:49):
and so there's a lot of possibilities,with what you could do, using federal
land or incorporating, privateland into this type of regime.
Obviously, the United States doesn'tface quite the same, urbanization,
rapid urbanization pressures.
We're as urbanized as we're going to getany rural urban shifts or urban shifts.
it's in the global sense.
It's all marginal.
but obviously, new housing developmentis sort of highly restricted,
(46:10):
especially in the most important jobmarkets, the centers of innovation.
So, New York, San Francisco, and if youcould just use federal land to unlock,
say, in the San Francisco Bay Area,new land for housing, right there.
there's potential hugegains from doing that.
And there's also interesting sites.
that could be used like abandonedmilitary bases that are no longer in use.
(46:32):
sites like that in particular, Ithink are particularly attractive.
we're talking about land that hasalready been developed in some form, but
it's now just sitting there uselessly.
it usually is in relative proximity tosome kind of existing area built up area.
so there's a lot of advantages why youwould want to build, in a place like
That, that would be silly, but there's,like, for example, there's a, out of
function military base just outsideof, Denver, Colorado, that's a pretty
(46:56):
large portion of parcel of land.
You could very easily redevelop that,and build lots of housing and target
a specific industry or industries.
to shut up, set up shopin that jurisdiction.
So we'll see what happens overthe next, I don't know, 18 months.
We're going to try to make this a reality.
And, you know, we'll see if thisis something that Congress and the
(47:18):
administration wants to, wants to pursue.
And we're optimistic.
You run a podcast on these topics.
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
And what sort of insights have you gained?
Sure.
so in addition to our, researchblogs, all the other things we do,
(47:39):
we have the Charter Cities podcast.
we bring on a range of experts in,from, cities, both kind of from
an academic sense, but also sortof practical, on the ground sense.
so with urban planners,city developers themselves.
and try to capture sort ofall facets of this ecosystem.
what folks are working on, why they'rebuilding what they're building, what
(48:01):
some of their challenges have been.
What their successes have been, andI think it's really useful to sort of
collect this information, collect thesestories, from the people who are both
studying these topics, but also actuallydoing the thing, and that can inform
not only what we're doing when we engagewith our research, but are engaged with
a partner in government or developer,but also the folks in that ecosystem who
(48:24):
are listening, and really just tryingto build up that base of knowledge.
for the benefit of the broader ecosystem.
We'll have all that on ourepisode notes, Jeff, your podcast
and the YouTube channel and thenewsletter will have all the things.
So we're moving to podcastextra or culture corner.
Have you got something you canrecommend to our listeners that
(48:45):
you've read, watched, experiencedlately that might be of interest?
Sure.
so we have an in house, staffbook club that meets, every month
or every other month at CCI.
And, one of our most recent, books wasreally a really interesting study of
a unique, experiment in governance.
It was called OutsourcingEmpire by Andrew Phillips and J.
C. Sharman.
(49:05):
So this is a deep dive on the British EastIndia Company, Dutch East India Company.
and some of the other European colonialcorporations that were established,
in the, 16th, 17th, 18th century whythey were established, why they were
so successful at, going as sort ofconquest, how they did it, why they
(49:25):
did it, but then also why they failed.
what they did, in these places,why they ultimately failed.
so it's a really interesting look fromboth the rise and the fall, and the
effects on the ground and the places.
the places where, wherethese, these, these sort of
imperial corporations worked.
and it's a really sort of fascinatingperspective into what, you know, the sort
of 18th century world and 19th centuryworld, looked like and was governed, in
(49:49):
a way that we, I think we often don'tthink about, but it's had profound
effects, obviously for the countriesin which these entities operated.
places like India, obviously huge,lasting effects from this sort of
form of colonization, that I thinkinforms a lot of, our understanding
of how these places operate today andsort of what some of their legacies
that they have to contend with are.
So a really fascinating dive
(50:11):
We'll have that on our episodenotes and Jess, your podcast extra.
I'm about five years behind thetimes here, Paige and Jeff, but I've
just started watching Ted Lasso,which I'm thoroughly enjoying.
I haven't watched it, Jess.
It's won a lot of awards and,um, I remember hearing about it
years ago and I think someonetold me briefly what it was about.
(50:34):
And I was like, nah,it's not really my thing.
It's great.
I'm loving it.
Have you seen it?
My wife and I also justwatched it for the first time.
Did
you enjoy it?
Yes.
it was fun.
How about you Pete?
Well, I've got one question for you, Jess.
How's your tennis
going, I have done a couple of lessonsrecently, which has been really
good for my, I was going to say myform, but I'd say my lack of form.
(50:56):
So I think my form is beginning.
in my first lesson, you'll enjoy this,Pete, I, I went in quite cocky, you know,
I can, I can hit a ball, I'm okay at this.
And he, the, the instructor was givingme some tips on my, on my backhand and
I did a double backhand and I hit himsquare in the neck with a tennis ball.
(51:20):
It's all about power Jess.
And he did that, you know, thatnoise that people do and they get
sort of winded and, I was mortified.
Yeah.
I didn't kill him, but I don'tknow if I can go back now.
Jeff underneath this, de, youknow, veneer, there's a beast in
chest so I'm not surprised by that.
But, my podcast extra is, abeautiful book called Fred
(51:42):
Williams, Diaries, 1963 to 1970.
Fred Williams was one ofAustralia's great landscape
painters, and he kept a meticulous.
And, I actually know hisdaughter, not very well, but
she's mentioned in the book.
the diary, starts off writing abouthis technique, how he can improve it.
And he talks about paintings,which this beautiful book, it
(52:04):
weighs about five kilos, but it'sgot the paintings reproduced.
he talks about the art world.
He talks about.
how his technique is eitherworking or not working.
But at the end of each year in thesediaries, he reviews his year and
he sets out what he wants to do.
But, Jeff, do you keep a diary?
(52:24):
I do not.
Okay.
Jeff, uh, Jeff, do you keep a diary?
Not since I was about 14.
I'd love to read that one.
Anyway,
it's, it's probably people won't beable to get it, but because it's sort
of an Australian production and justreading someone's diaries and there's
such dedication to their craft or.
(52:47):
art and just this senseof reflection about what's
working and what's not working.
So
maybe we need to start taking diariesand making diaries about the podcast,
Pete, so we can do reflections eachyear on what we need to improve on.
Well, the Netflix seriesis going to be fantastic.
It is going to be fantastic.
Jeff, thanks so much for beingpart of, planning exchange and
we'll have a full episode notes.
(53:08):
And thank you for, forbeing such a great guest.
Thank you for having me.
I'm going to have to pass ondiaries of, Fred Williams.
I found it on Amazon and, it'sabout 140 Australian dollars.
Oh, wow.
So
I might, I might pass, Imight be passing on that one.
How
much of that is shipping?
And, That's without shipping.
It was five kilos.
Yeah.
(53:28):
Jeff, your life will beenriched if you do, and read it.
Anyway, thanks again foryour, for everything.
Thanks for
having me.
Thanks for listening.
If you would like to hear more of ourpodcasts, hit the follow button on Spotify
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Please also visit our Instagrampage, LinkedIn or website for behind
(53:50):
the scenes footage of our podcastsand to get the latest on upcoming
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If you have any suggestions orfeedback, please get in touch via
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