Megacities, not nations, are the world’s dominant, enduring social structures | Hacker News Reader

Megacities, not nations, are the world’s dominant, enduring social structures

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184 pointssamsolomon49 comments

Michael Bloomberg wrote an article in Foreign Affairs saying that cities are now the centers of public policy innovation, in part because state and Federal governments are either controlled or blocked by people who want no policy and no innovation.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-08-18/city-cent...

My anecdotal, off-the-top-of-my-head memories bear that out: Almost all innovative policy, from biking to fighting obesity to climate change, seem to come from cities. State and Federal governments struggle with such useful policy issues as, should we have taxes and is climate change real.

Any region which isn't urban is, basically, Incapable of adaptation. It is totally beholden to the natural resources it has. Fertile soil? Shale oils? Nice beaches? Forests? The environment you have basically fixes your destiny. A government presiding over a rural area basically has to become like a corporation whose sole purpose is stewardship and exploitation of that natural resource.

Whereas cities are human constructs and so governing them is about stewardship and exploitation of the population of the city, which is far more adaptable - and requires more sophisticated governance.

That's a very insightful thought.

I do find it interesting how people are coming to the idea that local governments are where new ideas are formed, but degrade the concepts of States' rights or smaller federal intervention as racism whenever it doesn't suit a liberal agenda.

Because "States' rights" has historically been used as a dog-whistle for racism, segregation, and voter suppression. Moreover, the article is referring to city/local government which is different from the state. I don't see how conflating local innovation with state oppression is a liberal agenda.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States%27_rights#States.27_rig...

used as a dog-whistle

Such an overloaded term. It is also used to mean "something only some can hear, but I can't."

States have also been a source of innovation. California, Oregon, and Washington were noted as "bellwether" states, whose pioneering policies were sometimes adopted by other states. California's pollution/vehicular laws have been a force for positive change and innovation in the auto industry.

You could argue that it was the cities that gave these states such pioneering policies.

Urban California is a pretty liberal place, but rural California really isn't. Granted, I have my doubts it would be as conservative as the Deep South, but if Central California were a state of its own they'd probably repeal a number of these "pioneering" laws that cut into farm profits.

I would argue that states with a liberal voting record also likely have a majority urban population of registered voters, even if we're talking about a large state with plenty of land being used for natural resources.

Can you expand on your thoughts? I see "state's rights" as a call to get supporters when the state might do something that someone wants, and there's no real substance or distinguishing feature that lets us understand what is or is not a state right. It just appears to be a way to justify doing what you want. If you don't want something to happen, then you claim something is not a state right.

They're talking about American politics. "State" is referring to the 50 cosovereign subdivisions of the United States. "State's rights" refers to politics that defends the rights of states, rather than the national (aka federal) government, to set policy in certain areas.

I am an american person. I was referring to the fact that conservatives use state's rights to argue for things they want that the federal govt wants to do differently, but argue against states rights for the things that they want. So I don't see any real clarity in what people argue is or is not state's rights.

I'm not sure I agree. Your basic point—that governmental options are constrained by the economic options available—is sound, but that doesn't mean resources are destiny for rural areas.

For example, Vermont and New Hampshire are both rural states with similar climates. But the governmental policies are quite different. Rural areas also have non-natural economies and thus can adapt to different policy goals.

It is also something made necessary by the very existence of cities.

For an urban region to be viable, it needs a number of "nonurban" areas, to supply the prime and natural resources you mention, a city is by definition not self-sufficient.

For example, Sicily was known as the "granary of Rome", in ancient times...

This was also my first line of thought. Then I started reflecting... if cities are so dependent on the non-urban areas that provide all the natural resources, why is there such a disparity of power between the two?

The first thing to come to mind is: natural resources have been comoditized / financialized and are controled by "urban power"

(as I wrote in my other comment under parent)

[update] another obvious thing that should have occurred to me first: all the buyers for all the things the "non-urban" produce are in the urban areas...

Your comment made me go into a weird though experiment: What if non-urban areas could somehow "rebel" and escape from the power control of the government controlling the cities?

Thus creating some sort of "Urban city state islands" rich in human/tech resources surrounded by "Urban land states" rich in natural resources.

Obviously in such utopia these 2 entities could enter into much more balanced relationships of power and dependency from one another than what we have today.

I dare speculate that the reason that this currently cannot happen is that everything about natural resources is financialized and thus beholden to the power of the urban capital. The non-urban exploited by the urban is what we have... (also an imbalance in population from one to the other...) and many other reasons other will surely point out better than me!

It has been argued that this is what happened to Detroit: the "city" is financially separate enough from the surrounding state that it collapsed when its population moved into the suburbs. Of course that process of suburbanisation changes the boundary between "urban" and "rural".

'Natural resources' at least in the UK are not so much 'financialised' as in the control of hereditary landowners. The problems experienced today are not so much the urban exploiting the rural, as the rural landowners exploiting rural tenants.

To complicate matters, sometimes the landowners are neither urban nor rural but offshore.

Well said. I thought this was a brilliant insight.

I am curious how this contrasts with the increasing freedom of movement -- people are increasingly able to pick and choose which city to live in.

One of the greatest 'anchors' holding an individual or a family to a city is cost, so what happens when that cost is reduced to the bare minimum? Would we see the migration to urban centers accelerate (eg: Chicago holding >50% of Illinois' population rather than the current 20%)?

Would we see a return to informal alliances like the Hanseatic League[1] as cities increasingly view their Federal overlords as inadequate or obstinate?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

It was my understanding regionalism in Europe was to have a similar effect as more power was being devolved to local public institutions.

The big trend now seems to be state governments blocking public policy innovation from cities. The first time this came to my attention was with states blocking cities from deploying municipal WiFi a few years ago, in order to protect incumbent broadband providers. The current example is the "bathroom laws" in NC, MS, and SC, which block municipal ordinances extending legal protections to LGBT individuals, and furthermore block cities from guaranteeing any civil rights that are not guaranteed by the state.

In the first case, the cause is probably just that it's more cost-effective to lobby at the state level than to lobby every city council. In the second, it seems to be that the state legislatures are controlled by their rural counties. Both of these are probably problems with state constitutions, and so, very hard but not necessarily impossible to fix.

Article contains almost no data, no information to speak of to confirm its title. Instead it goes off and asserts the authors opinions and political views as facts.

Perhaps it is intended to be an opinion piece, but the title is that of a PR message accompanying the release of a research paper.

It seems mostly like an advertisement for some guy's book, which is also mostly an opinion piece.

Intuitively this seems like an obvious result of the network effect. (edit: I'm not intending to belittle anyone here and I apologise if it may seem that way).

Axiomatically, socially the sum of two humans is greater than the two humans apart.

And large cities, with metros, many villages that melt into one, employment opportunity, talks, bars, etc, are the embodiment of what it means to be social (with some exceptions - community feel being an important one).

In the UK this is at the forefront of politics - it is obvious to anyone that the country is governed as 'London plus appendages'. The rail and road networks are basically built around the capital. Most public transport subsidies go to the capital. The important (in a status sense, not in an absolute sense) businesses are headquartered there.

> Most public transport subsidies go to the capital

Most public transport revenue also comes from the capital. While literally millions of London's commuters pay thousands of dollars a year each for the privilege of being herded into overfilled cattle cars twice a day, Welsh/Scots/Northerners don't actually use the public transport they demand and hence it runs at a massive loss until it inevitably gets shutdown yet again.

Sure, I'm not making a value judgement, just stating how it is.

In my opinion, it makes a lot of sense to do that anyway, at least viewed from outer space.

Stepping away from 'the economy', London's public transport system is used because it's the only option. The roads are at capacity. I say this having driven basically every possible route in rush hour. They are full. I'm often surprised that we don't literally end up having gridlock and just all getting stuck forever.

A metro system in my small northern hometown would be pointless because there's hardly any road traffic so everyone just jumps in their car and has their nice personal space.

I find this quite interesting. Public transport has to be a better option for a critical mass to use it. This can happen either by it being much better (quicker), or by the alternatives simply ceasing to work.

> Most public transport revenue also comes from the capital

This is incorrect. 40% of 'Transport for London' (TfL) spending comes from fares, and approx. 27% from government [0]. That represents a real cash subsidy of £3.1B per year for londoners.

The disparity in infrastructure spending per resident is even more stark [1]. London receives more than half of all such spending in England despite containing less than a sixth of its population.

[0] https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/how-we-ar... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/aug/07/london-...

That's a reasonable argument because roads have zero subsidies. Wait, no.

The real issue is does London pay more or less in taxes for transportation than it receives in transportation projects. Considering the population and relative income of London it ends up subsidizing the rest of the UK.

What proportion of that 27% comes from taxes collected from Londoners?

Other than intuitive observation of the creative class economy, this article offers neither a definition of "dominant, enduring social structures" nor evidence outside of GDP as a metric. So far it's like "duh GDP in this day and age is a product of high-density geographic regions." Am I missing something here?

Perhaps the bit about companies setting up near an airport. Thus they ensure global access and think of their "home city" as mostly yet another venue. That, I think, someone serves as an insular force for the present "big" localities - localities large enough to have an international airport.

Circles in circles is a terrible chart. Humans have a very difficult time comparing relative areas of circles.

Much better would be to add a separate bar chart comparing all the countries and each bar separated into stripes for the city vs total. Perhaps on a log scale.

The chart they made might be more beautiful, but it's less informative.

> Humans have a very difficult time comparing relative areas of circles.

Area ~ diameter^2 so ...

But maybe too abstract.

When you are talking about comparing charts, I think he means visually, not mathematically.

I also meant visually.

Nassim Taleb (author of Antifragile) has talked about this:

http://www.economist.com/node/17509373

https://theglobalobservatory.org/2014/09/risk-and-robustness...

Italy seems a good example. Merchant cities that have stood alone for centuries, tolerating whatever ruling clan or invaders happen to be laying claim. Italy as a nation is basically a manufactured concept around these mini city states.

From the article: "Today cities have become the world’s dominant demographic and economic clusters."

Seeing that cities are essentially clusters of people, isn't this fairly self-evident?

No. There was a period in the mid-late 20th century where it appeared that the future was really in car-oriented sprawl, and the cities were abandoned to the poor people and minorities who couldn't afford to get out. The population growth, wealth, voters, political power, consumers, and the American Dream itself were in metro areas but definitely not city limits.

The idea of that cultural moment having ended is relatively new.

This reminds me of the ancient greek political philosophy arguments for the city-state republic as the primary form that government should be, for example Aristotle.[1]

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/

There was an economist whose work focused on how cities act as the fundamental hub of economic activity that supports the rest of a region, but his/her name escapes me at the moment. Some names were mentioned in the article, but they did not ring a bell. Anyone know whom i'm talking about?

It was Jane Jacobs! But i think it's great that i went fishing for one reference and got many pertinent ones. Thanks HN.

Perhaps Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"?

Jane Jacobs?

I was going to post her name. Jane Jacobs wrote, among other books:

- Cities and the Wealth of Nations

- The Death and Life of Great American Cities

- The Economy of Cities

Her last book, in 2004, was ominously titled "Dark Age Ahead".

Incidentally, I worked down the street from where she lived at the time of her death (the Annex, in Toronto). Her ideas were a recurring topic at the pub, the Duke of York.

You may be thinking of Richard Florida - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Florida - he talked about economic megaregions in his book 'The Rise of the Creative Class'.

Edward Glaeser?

His book, Triumph of the City, is a good read on urban economics.

I'm reminded of some of the descriptions of Discworld's Ankh-Morpork- it keeps getting invaded but in the end each wave of invaders ends up subsumed into the metropolis, and the city continues more or less unchanged.

Greater Delhi is entirely in Pakistan covering Islamabad and Lahore. Before any one picking pitchforks or tactical nuclear weapons, they should correct that in that map.

For a deeper look into the role of cities in society, check out the work of Jane Jacobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#Works

I guess it makes sense if you think about it. Nations can change on a whim pretty much, think Scottish independence or the possible creation of Kurdistan. On the other hand city buildings like those in Rome are there for hundreds or thousands of years.

Vid of Europe's changing borders and nations: https://youtu.be/uxDyJ_6N-6A?t=1m19s

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