Ferraris for all

Those of you who attended the Bookshop Barnie at the London School of Economics last Thursday may be interested in a side argument we had on the intellectual origins of London’s traffic congestion charge. Some described it as “state socialist” while I said I thought I remember that Milton Friedman, a free market economics guru, had come up with the idea. It turns out that it is true that some articles attribute to Friedman although according to a journal article (PDF) dug up by Austin Williams on road pricing the origin of the discussion is more complex. In any case it should be clear it is not accurate to describe it as a “socialist” measure.

Labels: cities, economics, transport

I have added to and updated the list of useful links on the left hand bar at the side of this site. New links include China Digital Daily, Climate Debate Daily, Culture Wars’ world development pages, the Future Cities Project and Indur Goklany’s papers. Any suggestions for further links or material for posts please email me HERE.

Labels: china, cities, climate, development, progress

Andrew Marr’s Britain From Above documentary series on BBC television was a pleasant surprise. His aerial perspective of Britain, although impressionistic in some respects, enabled him to make some useful thematic points. In particular the episode on “Manmade Britain” argued that Britain’s landscape is entirely shaped by human beings. The patchwork quilt of different coloured fields is a result of industrial agriculture which goes back to the enclosure acts of the early nineteenth century and before. Other influences include urbanisation as well as the creation of “green belts” around British cities (under the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act) and the establishment of national parks from 1949 onwards. Overall Marr argues that man has shaped Britain’s environment for more than 6,000 years. Before that it was almost all wood land.

Labels: cities, environment, television

Time magazine’s cover story (in the Asia and Europe editions) on “China’s short march” gives a vivid description of China in the midst of transformation from a rural nation to an urban one. In addition to the move from countryside to cities many millions of the newly affluent are moving to suburbs that surround China’s urban centres.

Although Bill Powell refrains from much editorialising in the piece there is a hint of environmental dangers through the spread of car ownership. He also ends with a warning about the potential dangers of inequality:

“It's not the people living the Great Chinese Dream — with the new house and the car and the dog and maybe a second child on the way — that the government needs to worry about. It's the people who build that dream for others, and then move on, hoping to do it again somewhere else. They, too, are vested in the country's economic miracle. But should that miracle somehow turn sour, look out.”

While the dangers are no doubt real it is a pity that it generally seems to be the negative points that are emphasised. On balance the urbanisation of China is a tremendously positive development.

Labels: Asia, china, cities, environment, inequality

The current Economist (19 December) has an article savaging those who romanticise hunter-gatherer societies. It argues against the view put forward by the likes of Jared Diamond that the development of agriculture was the worst mistake in human history.

Evidently in the 1970s some experts began to argue that the advent of agriculture led to a decline in human health – as people were short of protein and caught diseases from domestic animals – and the emergence of significant social inequalities. However, it now seems that hunter-gatherer societies were exceedingly violent:

“Several archaeologists and anthropologists now argue that violence was much more pervasive in hunter-gatherer society than in more recent eras. From the !Kung in the Kalahari to the Inuit in the Arctic and the aborigines in Australia, two-thirds of modern hunter-gatherers are in a state of almost constant tribal warfare, and nearly 90% go to war at least once a year. War is a big word for dawn raids, skirmishes and lots of posturing, but death rates are high—usually around 25-30% of adult males die from homicide. The warfare death rate of 0.5% of the population per year that Lawrence Keeley of the University of Illinois calculates as typical of hunter-gatherer societies would equate to 2 billion people dying during the 20th century.” (For another reference to Keeley’s work see post of 30 July 2006. On living conditions before the Industrial Revolution see 14 August 2006 and 7 April 2007 posts).

The Economist also makes an interesting parallel with the Industrial Revolution:

“When rural peasants swapped their hovels for the textile mills of Lancashire, did it feel like an improvement? The Dickensian view is that factories replaced a rural idyll with urban misery, poverty, pollution and illness. Factories were indeed miserable and the urban poor were overworked and underfed. But they had flocked to take the jobs in factories often to get away from the cold, muddy, starving rural hell of their birth.”

Labels: cities, happiness, health, inequality, progress

The World Bank’s World Development Report 2009 will focus on the economic geography of development. To quote the World Bank’s page on the report: “The objective of the World Development Report (WDR) 2009 is to identify and understand the interactions between geography, economic activities, and living standards, and to draw the implications of these interactions for public policy.”

A draft will be available in June 2008 and the full report will be posted on the site in October 2008.

Labels: cities, development, economics

My comment in the latest issue of Fund Strategy argues that the long-term economic growth of developing countries is far more important than short-term market volatility.

In the midst of the anxiety about a global credit crunch it is worth dwelling on some good news. The gap between the developed countries and the developing world has narrowed significantly thanks to rapid economic growth. In the long term this will prove a far more significant development than the turmoil in the credit markets.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per head in the developing countries grew by almost 30% from 2003-2007, according to the Trade and Development Report 2007 from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). In contrast, growth per head in the developed world grew by 10%.

Thankfully this narrowing of the gap is the result of the developing world growing strongly rather than stagnation in the advanced economies. As has become usual in recent years the economies of China and India look set to be the star performers in 2007. But Africa is forecast to grow by about 6% with Latin America and West Asia growing by about 5%. Fewer than 10 of the 143 developing countries are expected to suffer a fall in GDP per head in real terms.

Despite this narrowing of the gap it is important to recognise the developed world remains far richer than the developed countries. In 1980 the developed countries were 23 times better off than the developed world in terms of income per head. By 2007 this gap had narrowed to 18 times. However, it should also be remembered that East and South Asia have performed substantially better than the rest of the developing world.

The rapid development of the poor world is confirmed by several articles on cities in the latest edition of the quarterly Finance & Development from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). While Latin America is already highly urbanised, Asia and Africa, the world's most populous regions, are urbanising fast. Already about half of the global population lives in cities.

Such urbanisation should be warmly welcomed. Along with industrialisation it is a key part of creating a modern, developed economy.

So rather than fret about a little volatility in global markets look to the longer term. The world economy is growing fast and demand looks set to rise particularly rapidly in the developing world. Things are far from perfect - in particular the developing countries have a long way to go. But there is enormous potential on the horizon.

Labels: cities, Fund Strategy, growth, inequality

The September 2007 issue of Finance & Development, a quarterly publication from the International Monetary Fund, includes some interesting articles on the global trend towards urbanisation. Highlights include Martin Ravallion, the director of the development research group of the World Bank, arguing that, if anything, an even faster pace of urbanisation is needed. There are also numerous charts and statistics to illustrate how the world is urbanising.

Labels: cities, development

London’s Tate Modern gallery has a fascinating exhibition on 10 of the world leading global mega-cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, Sao Paulo and Tokyo. It looks at the cities from five perspectives: size, speed, form, density and diversity.

Even the basic statistics on cities are worth knowing. For example, in 1900 only 10% of the world’s population lived in cities, now it is 50% and by 2050 it is expected to be 75%. Also 95% of urban growth in future is expected to be in Africa and Asia.

An earlier version of the exhibition was shown at the 10th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2006 Venice Biennale. Some of the additional exhibits deal with predictably dull topics such as the environment and sustainability. But the bulk of the exhibition gives some insight into a key characteristic of the contemporary world. There are also further resources on the accompanying web pages on the exhibition.

Global Cities is free and runs till 27 August.

Labels: Africa, Asia, cities

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is organising a substantial conference in Istanbul this coming week on “measuring and fostering the progress of societies”. It is an important step in a trend to move away from economic indicators such as GDP as measures of progress towards well-being indicators (see, for example, posts of 4 April and 31 May). Among the many subjects being discussed are happiness (Richard Layard will be there), what constitutes progress, biodiversity, climate change, governance and global cities. The conference is being organised in co-operation with the European Commission, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the United Nations and the World Bank. It follows on from an earlier conference in Palermo in 2004. A large amount of useful information, including background papers, (PDF) is available at the OECD website.

Labels: cities, economics, happiness, progress

The Economist has a survey on cities by John Grimond in the new issue (5 May). Non-subscribers can get free access to the first article which puts the rise of cities into historical context. He also has a piece today on the Guardian’s comment is free site.

Labels: cities, development, progress

A new paper (PDF) by three World Bank poverty experts seems to suggest that urbanisation benefits the poor (it is summarised here). Martin Ravallion, Shaohua Chen and Prem Sangraula estimate that the rural poverty rate of 30% - using the $1 a day threshold - is more than twice the urban rate. In addition, 70% of the rural population lives on less than $2 a day, while the comparable proportion in urban areas is less than half that. To me this suggests that people migrate to cities from rural areas because they think they are likely to be better off.

It is true that an increasing proportion of the world’s poor are living in urban areas. But this trend is likely to be because of the growth of cities in absolute terms. About three-quarters of the developing world’s poor still live in rural areas.

The paper also looks at national and regional differences in patterns of poverty. It looks like it should repay closer examination.

Labels: cities, development, inequality

Spiked has covered extensively two items in this week’s news I would have liked to have written about if I had more time. Brendan O’Neill, spiked’s editor, wrote an article on Channel 4’s the Great Global Warming Swindle. The documentary evidently includes claims that global warming is caused by solar activity while also questioning the relationship between higher temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations. Whether or not such claims are right is besides the point. Rather than being accepted as a contribution to the debate anything outside the narrow orthodoxy on the subject is increasingly subject to hysterical witch hunts.

Meanwhile, James Woudhuysen did a demolition job on the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution’s report on The Urban Environment. The report apparently argued that, in the most literal sense, cities make people sick.

Labels: cities, climate, environment, spiked

I have not made any entries in the last few days as I have been on holiday in Istanbul. In that time a lot has happened which I hope to catch up on including a piece by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times on American inequality and the Unicef report on child well-being. But Istanbul itself is worth commenting on. In recent years it has grown enormously with a vast migration from the countryside to the city. It now qualifies as a “mega-city” as it has more than 10 million people. Over time an increasingly large number of the world’s population will live in such conurbations. This development should be welcomed rather than derided.

Labels: America, Asia, cities, development, happiness, inequality

It looks certain that some time in the coming year the number of city-dwellers will exceed the number of those who live in the countryside. It will be the first time in human history that most of the world’s population will be urban.

According to an article in today’s Independent a report from the Worldwatch Institute in January and one from the UN Population Fund, due out in the summer, will discuss this trend. This follows an earlier report published by the United Nations in 2006 on the same subject.

No doubt many critics will condemn this development as creating a “planet of slums” (to use Mike Davis’s phrase). But in reality the trend to greater urbanisation is closely related to economic development. People tend to move to the cities as they will enjoy a better life there than living an isolated existence in rural poverty.

Labels: cities, development

Let’s Build!, a new book by James Heartfield, is about to be published. As its title suggests it puts the case for a massive building programme for new homes in Britain. To quote the book’s publicity:

“This book explains why Britain stopped building homes for its citizens to live in. For too long government policy has been in the grip of officials who want to stop new building.

“Let’s Build! explains why all the reasons for not building new homes - the scare stories about the environment, about suburbia, about social cohesion - are just excuses.”

Heartfield is also talking at a conference at Kingston University on the suburbs on 23 September.

Labels: cities

The Guardian also has a review of Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. Ian Sansom makes the now common point that sometime soon the number of urban dwellers will outnumber the number the world’s rural inhabitants for the first time in human history. Sansom goes on to argue that:

“this is bad news, because the cities that Davis examines and describes are not the rich, vibrant cultural centres beloved of Sunday-supplement dandies and middle-class flâneurs, but vast "peri-urban" developments, horizontal spreads of unplanned squats and shantytowns, unsightly dumps of humans and waste, where child labour is the norm, child prostitution is commonplace, gangs and paramilitaries rule and there is no access to clean water or sanitation, let alone to education or democratic institutions.”

What Sansom forgets is that, bad as conditions in urban slums may be, conditions in rural areas are often worse. People in the third world are migrating to the cities for a reason. The challenge is to raise everyone’s living standards rather than attack third world city-dwellers.

Labels: cities, development

The Financial Times is running a series on the trend for an every-increasing proportion of the world’s population to live in cities (for a summary click here ). Evidently some time next year the number of urban dwellers will surpass that of those living in rural areas. Sounds like something to celebrate.

Labels: cities, development