It seems that in recent years that Paul Romer famous for his work on endogenous growth theory has been turning his atention to cities. In particular he has been thinking about what he calls 'charter cities' by which he means cities that established within the borders of a developing country but ruled by a different country with different institutional rules to those of the local economy.
Does this sound familiar - it should, as it is an outline of the history of Hong Kong turned into an academic theory.
You can view him at TED.
You can also listen to him in an interview with te CBC.
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/201002/20100208.html
More resources here:
http://www.chartercities.org/
This idea raises very interesting question regarding city development and whether there are bigger issues of whether theae can be created just about anywhere or hether there are some macro-geography issues involved as well. After all for awhile at least the most famous examples of Hong Kong and Singpore acted as entrepots for hinterlands. Is this a necessary condition? And it is possible to get them wrong, as exemplified by Macau.
Getting the rules right might not be the only thing to get right.
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