You cannot "fix" another group of people in another country. They have to fix themselves and go through the necessary procedures to stabilize, weed out problems and corruption, and change their culture, people, social mindset, and traditions. All the stable rich countries of today were once violence, corrupt, and environmentally dirty during their earlier years, suggesting a sort of "puberty period" that all nations go through.
One group cannot build a country, achievements, stability for another group. If they try it is almost always only a temporary success, followed by complete failure as soon as the original "building" group pulls out. Google "the white foreigner effect" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115... the most horrifying side effect is that natives purposely handicap themselves to signal need to an outside charity. This leads to dependency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-nets...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083
In the short term good is done and hearts are warmed but in the long term a nation doesn't develop an immunity to its problems. A charter city would be no different. People would become dependent on the charity, funds, resources, and achievement coming out of the foreign created character city. What incentive do they have to create their own city? If they tried how could they compete with the foreign city?
2nd Problem: The solution and problem in the article is based on an emotional desire to uplift another group of people. Don't you think they want to lift themselves up? Do you believe they want you to lift them up?
What the article suggests, which is basically "nation creation communism" will actually do more damage to a country than good. Because now the native original people of a country cannot compete with the success, wealth, and power of the "colonizers" who are trying to uplift them out of poverty. This is the same series of ideas that sound good and make you feel good but actually cause damage. Countries grow and mature and stabilize on their own at their own natural rate. Trying to artificially "fix" each country ahead of its time, I believe, is immoral. That's like giving your kid steroids because you want them to hurry up and grow faster.