ratti12_Samuel BoivinNurPhoto via Getty Images_bicycles rue de rivoli

Será que é o fim das cidades?

Feb 19, 2021 Carlo Ratti , Richard Florida

PARIS – A Rue de Rivoli, uma avenida que atravessa o coração de Paris, foi desenvolvida aos solavancos. Napoleão Bonaparte iniciou a construção em 1802, após anos de planificação e debate, mas as obras estagnaram após a abdicação do imperador em 1814. A avenida ficou abandonada até outro homem forte militar, Napoleão III, concluir o projeto na década de 1850. No século seguinte, a construção começou novamente – desta vez, para receber carros. Mas na primavera passada, a Rue de Rivoli vivenciou a sua transformação mais rápida até ao momento.

Com o tráfego de Paris dominado por um confinamento causado pela COVID-19, a presidente de câmara, Anne Hidalgo, decidiu no dia 30 de abril fechar a estrada de quase três quilómetros aos carros, a fim de criar mais espaço para pedestres e ciclistas. Os trabalhadores pintaram novamente a estrada e transformaram uma importante artéria no centro de Paris – residência do mundialmente conhecido museu do Louvre – praticamente da noite para o dia.

Não foi apenas a Rue de Rivoli. Usando apenas tinta e marcadores de aparafusar, quase 160 quilómetros de estradas parisienses foram temporariamente reatribuídas aos ciclistas nos primeiros meses da pandemia – uma revolução na reprogramação urbana. Posteriormente, foi anunciado que as mudanças tornar-se-iam permanentes.

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Carlo Ratti

Writing for PS since 2014
12 Commentaries

Carlo Ratti, Co-founder of the international design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati, is Director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT.

Richard Florida

Writing for PS since 2021
1 Commentary

Richard Florida is University Professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management.

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Paul Daley Feb 20, 2021

So, cities may have a future as conglomerations of closely packed small towns. But, how well do the structures of municipal government fit conglomerations of small towns. Detroit has found itself obliged to hive off neighborhoods it happily annexed during the 1940s and 1950s. Will other grand cities now find themselves on the same road to perdition?
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Stephen Morris Feb 20, 2021

You might like to consider the question whether cities SHOULD be reinvented or whether they should be phased out.

Despite being widely held, belief in the advantages of cities rests on very little evidence.

We know some of the disadvantages. We know that self-reported happiness tends to decrease with population density.

The case FOR cities rests largely on the claim that they are more efficient and innovative. But here the evidence is slight.

Mostly it rests on the observation that metropolitan incomes are higher than non-metropolitan incomes. This simply assumes away the most important issue: do those incomes reflect higher efficiency, or do they reflect more effective rent-seeking. Differential income is not equal to differential output. Differential output is equal to differential income, less the rent component, less the deadweight losses in extracting that rent.

Economists (especially metropolitan economists!) have a blind spot when it comes to considering rent. They readily accept the existence of rent-seeking by individuals. They readily accept the existence of rent-seeking by firms. They even accept rent-seeking by groups of firms – such as a cartel – working for their common benefit.

But when it comes to rent-seeking by a group of players in the form of a metropolis, rent-seeking is somehow out of the question. Economists assume that if metropolitan incomes (i.e. labour costs to the firm) were too high, firms would move elsewhere. The mere existence of metropolises is taken as “proof” of their efficiency

But what if the metropolis itself is a rent-seeking organisation which offer firms – and their employees – rent-seeking opportunities not available elsewhere.

We can easily see why this might be so. Proximity allows not only the swapping of innovative ideas. It also allows the negotiation of cartel-like behaviour. Indeed, proximity is essential for such anti-competitive behaviour. You might swap ideas by email. You're never going to discuss market manipulation except face-to-face.

Proximity bias also underlies political rent-seeking. We know that people are more trusting of - and more likely to reward - those who are physically proximate. You cannot effectively lobby - let alone offer a bribe - by phone. It must be done face-to-face. You need to be able to smell the other person.

I have witnessed this personally in the private infrastructure industry. This employs tens of thousands of skilled professionals doing at vast expense something which governments used to do simply and cheaply by issuing government bonds. The salaries of all those professionals is going into GDP. The cost is ultimately met by consumers paying – directly or indirectly – more for their infrastructure. But the contribution to welfare is zero.

Indeed, the net contribution is less than zero because the misallocation of highly trained professionals to a pointless activity means they are not available to do something really useful . . . say, weeding public gardens or organising children’s parties.

And the existence of this destructive industry depends critically on proximity bias and access to Ministers and senior public officials. To play in this game you must be face-to-face with the decision-makers. You need to let them know what kickbacks they may expect to receive (in the form of directorships or whatever) when they retire from public office. This is not something you can do over the phone.

There is a long history here. Courtiers expecting favours from the King needed to be physically proximate. Absence from Court was a death sentence.

Today's rent-seekers need to be within "lunching distance" of the Cabinet. The principle remains the same.

You might also consider why - in the UK - far-and-away the largest per capita recipient of identifiable public spending (excluding social welfare and agriculture) is not Scotland or Northern Ireland as one might imagine, but London. Is this not highly effective rent-seeking by a concentrated well-organised constituency?

You might also consider whether in those metropolises which plausibly do have agglomeration efficiencies (like Silicon Valley) it is the population which drives the income, or the high income which attracts the population.

People kept moving to Detroit long after the Golden Age of innovation in vehicle design. New technologies create rent-seeking firms which attract people long after the original innovation ceases.

So before we start reinventing cities, should we not ask the question: "Do we really need them at all?"
- Elizabeth Pula Mar 6, 2021
  
  Who is going to pay for the demolition, how and when, out of the kindness of the elite's real non-philanthropic hearts?
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