Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
states. Hence the receiving country would acquire the knowledge and institutions
that encourages growth and provides a charter for a defined territory. The charter
supersedes the laws of the surrounding state and provides the guarantee that the
people in the new city will be able to follow these new rules. The idea seems to have
come from the concept of special administrative zones, such as Hong Kong's colo-
nial status with Britain that protected it from communist rule in China and helped it
achieve such spectacular post World War II growth. Romer's attempts to persuade
Madagascar and Honduras to adopt the approach initially seemed successful, but by
2012
both examples had failed, the former because of a change of government from
a previously supportive regime, and the latter because of political opposition from
the country's constitutional court that did not want to give up jurisdiction (Melkin
2012
), although the idea was being talked about again in Honduras in early 2014.
Much of the opposition came from the self-serving elites that did not want to cede
powers, although some development economists, suspicious of neo-colonialism,
have also been vocal in their criticism (Mallaby
2010
). Although the idea seems
new, to some extent the export-processing zones that have grown up in many devel-
oping countries are examples of similar practices of what amounts to a replacement
of some national rules with special ones in the zones to encourage industrial growth.
Moreover, it is usually hoped that the zones will create knowledge acquisition in at
least the making of things, by importing skills that locals will subsequently acquire,
which might lead them to create future growth.
In an historical context it can also be argued that the idea of the Charter City may
be a new version of older ideas, ranging from classical era Greek city states using
their own legal practices when they established their daughter cities in other lands,
to the charters that gave separate powers to many new European medieval towns
as well as privileges and land to tempt traders to these outposts (Beresford
1965
),
such as in the powerful Hansa League of commercial centres in Northern European
lands. In both cases the invading peoples, traders or princes establishing the centres
were more powerful than the locals and there were less obvious restrictive territo-
ries at the time compared to the national units of today. Although these historical
examples may not be knowledge cities in the sense of the intellectual capital that
is used here, their knowledge as 'doing', in creating new services and crafts, com-
bined with the ability to be free from local political overlordship, provide examples
of the way that societies in the past managed to create thriving urban entities in new
lands based on legal and new economic principles from the old.
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Conclusions
The last half century has seen a seemingly inexorable development of what are
now called the knowledge industries, many of which are spatially concentrated in
a small number of areas. By understanding the various factors that create these
concentrations in cities, as well as the negative features that repel them, it may be
able to improve their economic importance. Devising new policies built upon this
