Designing Private Cities, Open to All

Readers should keep in mind that the authors (at least Mr. Tabarrok) are libertarians, and don't care for the welfare state. So a privately managed city, in their conception, will pay its way through self-selected residents who have the skills to make money and will never need welfare. Not having to think about welfare and the indigent (who would have no incentive to reside in such cities) is a feature and not a bug to the libertarian mind.

Private Cities are not the place to house welfare recipients. But they are the place to train welfare recipients in skills that advance their opportunities to become employable, productive members of society. The deplorable situations brought about by sub-standard education, cultural collapse and vast numbers of Americans who would rather dream of being rock-stars then studying calculus will also not be solved by Private Cities. The only thing that will be solved by Private Cities are viable work-live environments where enlightened business entities can began to turn the erosion of American economic interests around. A glass and concrete building is only a shell. What happens inside that shell is what counts. If the inhabitants are focused upon creating wealth for their stockholders, nothing will change for our society. If they are dedicated to improving the situations that are slowly destroying that society and making a profit by doing so, then we have something to hope for. The real promise of the Private City is that it provides use with a second chance to get urban existence right. But such a city will only be as productive and worthwhile as the individuals who work there. Every comment above will give such people the lessons they need to consider to make a Private City worth building. Visit http://Innovatopolis.com on April 1. See what it will take for your company to become involved in building such a city. Join us if it works for you. Not all companies have to suck.

Each model of public or private cities implies both advantages and disadvantages. Private cities would be good from the economic view, but economy is just one of many aspects that city managers should face everyday.

On one hand, public cities traditionally serve all people in the city, but to build it, the government usually has to face with serious shortage of funding for infrastructures.

On the other hand, private cities would be easier to manage and control, but they primarily serve benefits of its payers, and usually opt out benefits of the general people who do not pay.
Semi-public funded urban areas, or public-private-partnership (PPP) cities, seem to be the potential for us to explore and to experiment further, because there are many ways to build a PPP city.

In Vietnam, PPP cities can now be built by private investors, but public areas and streets should given back to the city as public places, and the government should still take an important role to balance and protect the general benefits of local inhabitants.

Saigon South (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), a PPP urban development project from scratch since 1990, would provide useful experiences of a good PPP development process for other new cities in the future in Vietnam, as well as elsewhere in the world.

I am really surprised at the New York Times, who normally has such excellent content. These authors are factually incorrect on their key points. The ghost cities in China are built by private real estate developers. Because real estate is the best private investment opportunity for Chinese households it fuels construction of housing, but not for occupation. In fact, China is full of displays of what happens when a market economy is unregulated: environmental degradation, unsafe food supplies, etc. I lived and researched in Beijing last year and can tell many stories! Meanwhile, Irvine, CA happened not only because of master planning by its original developers who had a civic, egalitarian agenda that is all too rare these days, but it is its famously high performing public schools and public services that is the big draw in housing demand there.

In full disclosure, I am an urban planning professor but I'm one that is not at all hostile to the private real estate market but see it as a key driving force that could be harnessed for public good. But, the idea of public and private working is not newsworthy at all. And these authors' points of the wonders of the private sector are even older and only half the story.

Corporate enclaves, plebeian slums. What a great thing to strive for.

as an urban studies professor i say, no, we need less of this. though i have colleagues there, i'm really worried about GMU who has sold their intellectual integrity to Koch Inc. and shame on the NYT for printing this and not tagging it with "paid advertisement"...

Great article and mind boggling statistics about China and India. On a US domestic issue, I've always been puzzled by the duplication of administration and other municipal services. For example, would Mobile County, Alabama (total population 450,000) benefit from an amalgamation of the 5 or so separately operating cities within the relatively small county? I choose this locale as I previously lived there. If anyone is aware of studies comparing the benefits of a single large city vs a multitude of small ones, I'd be interested. On the surface, economy of scale would dictate that a single police/fire, education, administration, etc etc would be efficient and beneficial that 5 independent ones operating within a small geographic area?

Yes of course, an economist thinks that cities ought to be commercial adventures, run for profit, and fundamentally for the sake of the rich. Irvine is nice town in part because there are no poor people there -- they live in the crummy suburbs down the road.

Without democracy, without a pubic good guiding the principle of urban development, there can be no 'city' -- just a 'development'.

How high will the walls be? And will they lock the gates at nightfall? Will the firemen and teachers and store clerks live in favelas outside the walls and line up at daybreak to enter? Or will there be dormitories for workers? I guess dormitories might be an improvement in India.

Only someone insidious or completely uninformed would hold up Irvine, CA--a featureless sprawl bereft of cultural life, entertainment, galleries, museums, sports, performance venues, public parks, family businesses, local restaurants and retail, and reasonable transportation options; served by a random tangle of toll roads and parkways to nowhere that double or triple the average commute; suffering from aging and inadequate electric lines, street lighting, and sewers, and in most cases even lacking side walks--as an example of anything other than irresponsible, resources-draining, soul- crushing suburban catastrophe.

Jamshedpur works because of TATA. Period. India owes so much to TATA - the fantastic multinational yet social industrial conglomerate. Mumbai enjoys 24 hrs power thanks to Tata. Its not land, its not incentives and definitely not Tata. India develops INSPITE of its government not because of it.

"Gurgaon was a small town 25 years ago, but today it’s a city of some two million people filled with skyscrapers, luxury apartment towers, golf courses, five-star hotels and shopping malls."

The author writes as though this is a good thing. Golf is the most polluting sport humans have devised. Think about it...all the groundwater used, all the chemicals dumped, and the oil used to power the machines that dump the chemicals.

Jacobs argues that an extremely important aspect of any successful large city is design based on all socioeconomic groups instead of design based on the group who has the most earning and spending potential. Reston and Irvine and planned communities like it have median household incomes almost double the national average--such wealth naturally affords quality infrastructure and design.

In the case of my hometown--The Woodlands, TX--that wealth is largely derived from a nearby metropolitan center to which the residents commute and on which they rely, though now, after fifty years, it's beginning to be home to its own college-degree-requiring jobs. Also, despite George Mitchell's original dream of making it an all-inclusive community, The Woodlands has become rather demographically lopsided compared to it's big brother, Houston. Irvine and Reston are similar: their demographies are quite different than the nearby metropolitan centers.

A couple questions that are yet to be answered by the US master-planners: Can a private city (not just a town or suburb) that's open to all exist separate from a public municipality, and if so, what would it look like? And, is being open to all the same thing as including all in the design?

So long as private cities must ensure the rights of the citizens who live therein, the same way an airline, or bus, or mall must do...

A change in degree can become a change in kind: private cities and public right of ways for example. At what scale is the moat and draw bridge of the gated private property no longer permitted?

You do not need to show ID to enter into the US Supreme Court yet.

Nor into Article I.

Article II, however, required and FBI background check to visit the white house.

Where's Howard Roark when you need him.

Corporate feudalism? I think not.

Why does China have ghost cities? Corruption. See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/business/dealbook/in-china-a-building-...

Nothing described here gives one much hope for healthy and vibrant new cities. First of all, explosive population growth such as the 404 million people India anticipates in 35 years will make it impossible to plan or build thoughtfully and responsibly. It will be anarchy. Anyone in doubt may consider that it has taken 14 years to complete only 3 buildings at the World Trade Center. In Staten Island, I-278, a simple on-land highway is only 8 miles long, but it has been under construction for 10 years and is nowhere near done. And finally, the ARC tunnel to provide essential train service between NJ & NY was in planning for 15 years and construction was well underway when Gov. Christie cancelled the project to burnish his political standing with his anti-government, every man for himself party.

Design can solve many problems, but it cannot solve the social problems that cause the boondoggles described above.

There once was a system like this. It was called feudalism. We gave it up for something better, freedom.

LOL! You're actually implying that this young generation are actually something more than Poetry Majors. America is doomed by laziness and stupidity.

Maybe we should put our energies into reducing our population, rather than trying to patch a leaky dam that will inevitably fail.

A world of gated communities or company towns is not a free world.

How strange to read an (utterly unconvincing) endorsement of a dystopic future.

..."a private city, open to all"...

Sounds like a contradiction in terms.

I am perplexed to read an article that discusses large scale development around the globe without regard or thought to the accompanying rise in demand for food, services, waste, and other earthly materials. What about population control? Wildlife extinction? Consideration for the environment?

The author simplifies the status of Reston, Virginia. It is a planned community with some government services provided by the non-profit Reston Association. However, police and fire services are provided by Fairfax Country, VA and Reston zoning is ultimately under the control of the Fairfax County Government. Reston is slowly being transformed from a planned community to just another DC suburb as private developers interlope on land that was originally planned as green space. Many residents fear that the private sector is ruining Reston. The author's portrayal of Reston is both an over-simplification and largely inaccurate.

It should be noted that the author is associated with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, an entity that has received significant funding form the Koch Brothers and Exxon-Mobil. The Mercatus Center is known for attempting to dilute government regulations and individual protections while promoting the interests of large corporation. Do your own research on this "think tank" and on the true nature of Reston.

Cities are hard, so let's give all of our power over to private entities, who surely have our best interests at heart! What could go wrong?

I don't agree with your thesis : Strong, rich, democratic and transparent states governments ideally should always be responsible for designing, building and managing (governing) cities so the forces of the market (earnings) that private companies intrinsically look for, don't get in the way of the benefit for people.
But then again I guess there are not left any more non corrupt honest governments in the entire world that is a fantasy. unfortunately there are not likewise private companies either!!! Sorry no solution
A

The authors paint a rosy picture overall, but I shudder at the future this foretells: ever more encroachment on and control of civic life by corporations. What happens when the company in the company town decides to move somewhere else for cheaper labor, better tax breaks, or simply goes out of business? And do we really want corporations to control and run our school systems? Would the Chevronville school system be amenable to teaching about climate change and solar energy?

I haven't lived in either Reston or Irvine, but have visited both several times. Both seem pleasant enough, but rather 'soulless'; a little too neat and tidy for my taste. I also remember having a friend who lived in a part of Irvine that I hated visiting, because it was literally several square miles of houses that looked exactly alike. That was a few decades ago though, so hopefully they've been at least somewhat individualized since.

Pushing 'private cities' as a shining example? I'm not surprised that this article was written in New York, which has few examples of such privately planned places. Live here in South Florida and you get a very different perspective. For one thing, there are so many private, gated-off streets that side streets that could serve as 'Plan B' alternates to the main roads just don't, in many areas, exist - especially in suburban areas of Palm Beach County and in some of the relatively newly built-up areas elsewhere. The result? 'Rush hours' which are anything but, as in near-gridlock. And then there is the omnipresent feature known lovingly as the HOA, which officially stands for 'Home Owners' Association' but can, in some places, just as easily stand for 'Horrendously Oppressive and Asinine'. (Really, how else can you describe rules which prohibit such things as flying your country's flag on a pole in your yard, or even putting a Christmas wreath on your door?
Or enabling laws which allow a developer to pass off a house whose second story is frame as CBS (Concrete Block and Stucco) when only the first floor was built that way? I know people who found out the hard way what THAT leads to - think bad roof leaks, or worse - after a good, stiff hurricane.)
So let's just privatise everything. Worked great a thousand years or so ago, didn't it, fellow serfs?

There was a movie called Escape from New York. It involved a Manhattan Island in the not too distant future that was turned into a prison colony. All access was restricted. All the bridges and tunnels were destroyed and the residents were left to fend for their selves. Sounds like the opposite is happening.

The NYC of the future left only to the rich and foreign investors. It doesn't need to be a city in the traditional sense any more all it's workers like police thru janitors could commute from anywhere else. Why have an actual government they would only tax. User fees are more democratic. A court system wouldn't be required. The rich don't commit crimes and if they did society would be better off letting them remain free since they're so productive.

Privatize everything. Would't New Yorkers prefer to have a government like Singapore that actually realizes it represents it's citizens or just the rich?

"Even better, top-down planning can ensure competition among cities by auctioning enough land to build five to seven proprietary cities in a region. Competition will keep rents low and create incentives for innovation and experimentation."

And a dwarf will point at the sky and cry out "The plane! The plane."

What will actually happen is that there will be no competition because, just as cable companies control their regions, charging what they wish, the corporate owners of these 21st century mill villages will push rents ever higher until only the management of the companies can afford to live in these developments.

Chinese cities do have excesses such as the two ghost towns the article mentioned. But they are not the result of government top-down planning, but unplanned real estate speculation. Beijing's subway systems carries more than 10 million riders daily, and it is among the most efficient system to move people around. It is public funded and planned. The idea of private cities has been tried before. Henry Ford once tried to build a Ford town in Amazon, but failed. Such communities, if successful, may be well planned and comfortable, but they are also socially exclusive and homogenous. If the companies fail, and many do, what happens to the towns? Private spaces can never solve problem of our cities. We need more well maintained and accessible public space, facilities and infrastructure. China's subway is actually the successful story.

New neighborhoods and towns should follow the New Pedestrianism model, which puts automobile streets at the rear of all homes and businesses, and puts pedestrians and cyclists up front on car-free lanes that function like linear parks. A much smaller number of shared, electric, self-driving cars should replace what will be 2 billion private cars in 2020, thus saving a million lives a year and reducing greenhouse emissions by one-third. The wirelessly interlinked, autonomous cars will then be free to roam in packs, at high speed, out of sight, without signage, signals or traffic jams. When people are not safely riding in the type of non-polluting vehicle they want, when they want (for a fraction of the cost of owning a vehicle) they can be walking on the pedestrian lanes in peace, beauty and comfort in a safe, quiet, village-like setting.

Are cities human storage units?

Without a socioeconomic environment that allows people to earn a living and have equal opportunities and privileges, even the best constructed cities will be doomed.

We may be confused on this issue but humanity is still a nomadic species -- we move from place to place based on available resources. Around here, Ontario is littered with the ghosts of former business empires -- that thrived while there was something to dig up or cut down. Then the business went away but the humanity was left behind. This is everywhere. While urbanization is probably a good model, we need to think of what happens when the commercial driver goes away. Detroit comes to mind. Perhaps if the driving employer cleaned up the mess on the way out we might all be better off. Maybe would not work for a place like New York or CHicago but for the thousands of company towns across the world, a possibility?

As a professional city planner, I was intrigued by the headline, but the authors' argument left me wanting. The fundamental argument is that publicly lead urban development in developing nations is dysfunctional, so private options should be explored instead. This is tired rhetoric that relies on a limited selection of case studies to prove the authors' point.

Not to mention, the authors incorrectly conflate urban development in the Global South with urban development in the United States, and they seem to forget that urban governance is complex and as such economic efficiency is only one consideration among many when guiding the development of cities. The privatization of government functions has happened in the US and elsewhere, but private governance comes with its own difficulties and with the added problem that it may undermine the democratic process.

The challenge for private cities is their ability to meet the long term needs of a diverse population. The private cities uses as an example in the US are upscale communities designed for only a segment of the population. Governments should establish overall standards for these communities. I have no problem letting the private sector use its creative abilities in this process, but the communities need to be designed for the long haul and to be inclusive for all segments of the population.

Any mention of public and private space should, in my humble opinion, include the words Los Angeles. A native Angeleno myself, the experiment that is LA is the prototype for much of what does not work in the long run. LA builds a rail line that almost reaches, but stops short of the airport. LA destroys it's rail system only to later try to build it again. Have the world's planners visit Los Angeles to see how not to do it.

Harry Webber Los Angeles, CA Pending Approval
As one ventures North on Amtrak's Coast Starlight from Los Angeles to San Jose and Silicon Valley as I do twice a month, it is painfully obvious that there are thousands and thousands of undeveloped, uninhabited land in this beautiful state, between Los Angeles and San Francisco in the vast stretches of Montarry County. Located between Big Sur on the Coast and Route 101 are stretches of undeveloped land identified on Google Maps only as Twin Valley that could become the site of a spectacular new metropolis. Glass and steel spires, sprouting from the sand and mesquite, overlooking the peaks of Big Sur to the blue Pacific Coast just beyond. Perhaps another technology center to relieve the spread of Silicon Valley. Perhaps a hub for space exploration in support of Vandenberg just south of this newest of American centers of commerce. Does such a city have to be American born? Why not a western outpost of China's surge toward Neo-Capitalism? Or a Federal University Town devoted to the study and exploitation of new technologies like Nanotechnology or BioPhysics. The point is that our Nation is vast. Locations abound for this new generation of private cities and forward-thinking communities. Why not a vision for the future devoted to innovation and creativity? We have the space. All it takes is the will. I have the will. I invite you to join me at Innovatopolis.com on April 1, 2015.

But how are city workers going to have jobs-for-life guarantees, generous pensions, and so on? What is the incentive for private companies to pay a retired town manager $80,000/year for the last 30 years of his life?

Unlike emerging economies, America is not in need of new cities. Already, existing American cities are ghost towns, relics of a glorious past. It is likely many American cities (Detroit, Chicago, parts of Los Angeles, etc.) will be razed, demolished, the inhabitants resettled elsewhere. What America needs is a new living model for the inhabitants. Many forward thinking people have determined a return to the past might work well in New America. Such a past will include an agrarian based plantation living scheme for the ever growing American illiterate population. This model will provide sustainable rural living for the occupants, who will have the opportunity to live off the land, pay a modest sum to public or private land owners. This new social order will likely become a necessity to preserve social order and feed the burgeoning American underclass..

As one ventures North on Amtrak's Coast Starlight from Los Angeles to San Jose and Silicon Valley as I do twice a month, it is painfully obvious that there are thousands and thousands of undeveloped, uninhabited land in this beautiful state. Of particular interest are the foothills and sagebrush areas midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco in the vast stretches of Montarry County. Located between Big Sur on the Coast and Route 101 are stretches of undeveloped land identified on Google Maps only as Twin Valley that could become the site reimagined

The world doesn't need more cities. It needs less people.

How exciting. I can't wait to live in a city where my water supply, electricity supply, schools and other public services depend on the whims of a large corporation and I have no say in government. The writer here cites the dysfunction of cities planned by government from the top down. What about the alternative of planning the city from the bottom up -- involving the people who live there in the planning process? That is the way to create a liveable, functioning city. What this writer advocates is more neo-liberal nonsense.

Ok, now tell me when democracy and what the people want in their city will come into play in all these proposed, corporate-city-planning ventures.

The biggest problem in designing a city?

The biggest problem in designing a city is a very sad problem. A city of great complexity, efficiency, beauty cannot be designed without contemplating and in end demanding a type of human being--or to put it more clearly, improvement in city design is impossible without also imagining an improved human being or at least "human to fit city conception".

Take two extremes: A Mongol horseman and occupant of projected Mars colony. The average Mongol horseman probably preferred movement across Steppeland. Any scientist can tell you that a projected Mars mission begins and ends not with technology but the type of people that are to be sent to Mars. We can guess that with all the problems we are having on earth (everything from war to climate change) that a projected future human city will unfortunately be more along the lines of a Mars colony--efficient, sustainable--than a "city" of horsemen wandering at will, doing as they will.

I would go so far as to say the task is not to design cities but to begin designing the humanity required to keep the earth from becoming a hellish place to live. But what does "designing humanity" mean? Unfortunately that is at least much of what we have today: Scrutinizing humans and passing and failing them in educational system, workplace. But the future will be even more painful--rigorous, genetic, social examination of the humans we need to become in a world we are rapidly turning into...Mars.

Slowly but surely, our democratic institutions atrophy by default, as the people we elect privatize this and sell off that while we look the other way. Who, pray tell, will the people running these cities account to? Voters or stockholders? We might as well regress all the way and bow down to a Lord of the Manor.