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This is a fun read. What can economists learn about urbanization from Burning Man?<\/p>\n
\n\n\n\u201cTo be a little grandiose about it, this is a really unique moment in human history,\u201d Mr. Romer told me last year. <\/em><\/span>\u201cWe\u2019re likely to decide in this time frame what people are going to live with forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Urbanization in the developed world has largely come to an end; nearly everyone who would move from farmland toward cities already has. This century, the same mass migration will run its course across the rest of the world. And if no one prepares for it \u2014 if we leave it to developers to claim one field at a time, or to migrants to make their way with no structure \u2014 it will be nearly impossible to superimpose some order later.<\/p>\n
It will take vast expense, and sweeping acts of eminent domain, to create arterial roads, bus service, trash routes, public parks, basic connectivity.<\/p>\n
That prospect agitates Mr. Romer, because the power of cities to lift people out of poverty dissipates when cities don\u2019t work. To economists, cities are labor markets. And labor markets can\u2019t function when there are no roads leading workers out of their favelas, or when would-be inventors never meet because they live in gridlock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nMr. Romer\u2019s answer is to do with this moment what Burning Man does every summer: Stake out the street grid; separate public from private space; and leave room for what\u2019s to come. <\/span>Then<\/em> <\/span>let the free market take over. No market mechanism can ever create the road network that connects everyone. The government must do that first.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n