An Overview of Charter Cities and The CCI with Founder Mark Lutter.

The Charter Cities Institute has seen rapid growth in recent months, having gone from three employees in February to ten as of this week, so we decided to do something a little different on today’s show. Kurtis Lockhart, Head of Research at the CCI sits down with Founder, Mark Lutter, to provide a high-level overview of the concept of charter cities, why their time has come, how the CCI fits into it all, and what the future holds. The first part of the conversation is all about charter cities, how they differ from conventional ones and special economic zones, and why they are becoming more important. From there, we move onto the history of charter cities, getting into some major recent advocates of the movement and a few examples of successful semi-autonomous cities from the post-war era and what we can learn from them. We turn our attention to some of the common criticisms of charter cities next, considering the political threat they could end up posing, how they propose to be different from the countries they exist in, and how to get people to start moving into them once development commences. Following this, we explore the implementation aspect of charter cities, discussing how the CCI is approaching six things that should be considered before building one: Governance, policies, urban planning, site selection, selecting an anchor tenant, and minimizing the risk of expropriation. The last part of our conversation is all about the CCI as an organization – Mark’s research that led to its founding, the challenges and successes it has seen, and the vision it has for the future. Be sure to catch this episode for an in-depth look at the potential charter cities and the CCI have to change the world for the better.Key Points From This Episode:•   A high-level definition of charter cities and why they are important.•   How charter cities differ from conventional cities and special economic zones.•   Four aspects of charter cities that enable them to spur long-term economic development.•   How the CCI’s version of charter cities would be governed and set up through public/private partnerships.•   Why governments would invite developers to build and collaborate on charter cities.•   The amount of master plan cities being built globally and range of their value propositions.•   The advantages of a charter city over a master-planned one and a regular one.•   Ideal environments to build charter cities in; openness, rapid urbanization, and more.•   Why now is a time where charter cities seem more valuable than ever.•   Reinvigorating liberalism and the cosmopolitanism of trade cities using charter cities.•   How charter cities fit into the effective altruist framework of tractability, neglectedness, and scalability.•   Conceptions of scalability and the work being done to enable charter cities to scale.•   A history of charter cities and how the CCI is building on Paul Romer and Patri Friedman’s work.•   Early examples of cities built using a degree of planning and their modern influence.•   Problems with unplanned and planned cities and the ‘slow feedback loop’ of cities.•   Lessons to be learned from successful, semi-autonomous cities in the post-war era.•   Common criticisms of charter cities and how they are based on misunderstandings.•   How to get people to move to a charter city; reasons why people start and move to cities.•   Why governments might expropriate their charter cities; the political threat they could pose.•   Issues around building charter cities in upper or...

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