Super-City State Theory
When Doctor Louise Egerton and her colleague Doctor Simon Fraser stopped over in Singapore on the way back from an economics forum in Sydney, Australia they were struck by how successfully the city state was adapting to the challenges and opportunities presented by the global economy.
According to Egerton and Fraser, nearly all of the tenets of Super-City State Theory were established during that two day stopover and on the second leg of their flight to the UK.
They gave consideration to the dominance of city states throughout most of the history of human civilization and to the relatively brief dominance of nation states as the default political and economic unit. They also considered the growing field of research into world cities, seen by many to represent a de facto return to the dominance of city states in the global economy.
Their starting point, then, was one of accepting that most modern nation states will struggle to compete on their own terms in the new world economy. London, for example, is a dynamic city of globally significant proportions, but it is hampered by being an integral part of the UK hinterland. They also accepted that the trend was moving firmly in the direction of the city state and away from the nation state.
So what hope could there be for nation states? Egerton and Fraser used the UK as their model and quickly developed the concept of the Super-City State.
Their idea was to imagine the country as a constellation of city states, all centred around the hub of London, but with other cities such as Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff and Birmingham all operating as semi-independent players in the global economy.
For example, they imagined each city having the power to offer specific incentives for inward investment as well as having the power to introduce special zones in which tax incentives could apply. They also imagined the constellation cities having greater power over the way they developed, including swift and powerful tools for the compulsory purchase of derelict and brown-field sites, the right to insist on a locally-tailored design brief for developments and, again, the right to offer tax incentives to developers.
Egerton and Fraser imagined the role of central Government in this process as twofold. It would oversee the system of checks and balances that would govern the actions of all of the cities, including London. It would also ensure that the channels of communication between the cities provided as level a playing field as possible, both in an advanced and integrated transport system, and in electronic connectivity.
The gains, they argue, could be enormous. Firstly, development pressure would be reduced on London, and indeed on smaller towns and rural areas across the south of England. Secondly, parts of the country which have been left behind by the stratospheric success of London in the global economy would actually regenerate spontaneously whilst feeding off their proximity to the capital city. And the net result for Britain, operating as a Super-City State rather than as a global city (London) subsidising a struggling hinterland, would be to enhance its overall position as a global power.
Egerton and Fraser have subsequently started looking at how Super-City State Theory could be adapted to other geographical areas. For example, they are currently looking at ways in which the cities around the Baltic could form a latter-day Hanseatic Constellation.
As for America, they see two possible ways of applying Super-City State Theory. One is to imagine the country as a galaxy of separate constellations working together – California, the North East, etc. The other is to imagine the entire country as already being a Super-City State, and a successful one at that, but then making future policy decisions accordingly.
But as Egerton says, ‘We still think relatively small maritime trading nations are the ideal candidates to reap the greatest rewards from Super-City State applications – the Netherlands, Japan, and of course, Britain.’
(coming next - groundhog thinking)
