> Centrally planned cities are invariably poor: Brasilia, Washington DC, Abu Dhabi, and so on. I would take an organic city like Paris, Milan, London, New York, or Tokyo any day over a planned city.
"Organic cities" tend to happen because there was a natural economic draw-- a good port, a big deposit of natural resources, a crossroads in transport networks, a safe climate. People were coming there unsolicited, before the city planners arrived.
Planned cities tend to have been shoehorned into existence in places with no economic appeal, often for political reasons like "let's develop a dead area" or "lets put our purpose built capital away from big influential existing cities." Brasilia and DC were in basically uninhabited territory. Who is that going to atteact? The government workers who have to follow the jobs, and people who figure they can exploit a relatively captive market with inferior, expensive services.
I'd love to see someone try to build a planned city in a proven area of economic appeal. It would probably have to either be 1) a country like China with the ability to suspend objections an private property rights enough to deliver the vision or 2) a post-war or natural disaster buildout.
"Organic cities" tend to happen because there was a natural economic draw-- a good port, a big deposit of natural resources, a crossroads in transport networks, a safe climate. People were coming there unsolicited, before the city planners arrived.
Planned cities tend to have been shoehorned into existence in places with no economic appeal, often for political reasons like "let's develop a dead area" or "lets put our purpose built capital away from big influential existing cities." Brasilia and DC were in basically uninhabited territory. Who is that going to atteact? The government workers who have to follow the jobs, and people who figure they can exploit a relatively captive market with inferior, expensive services.
I'd love to see someone try to build a planned city in a proven area of economic appeal. It would probably have to either be 1) a country like China with the ability to suspend objections an private property rights enough to deliver the vision or 2) a post-war or natural disaster buildout.