Re-imagining Cities as an Opportunity

This post is part of our Re-imagining Cities discussion series, following the third edition of the NewCities Summit in Dallas in June 2014.

In this session, Paul Romer made clear why we should regard urbanization as opportunity. If there were a single theme running through Paul Romer’s address, it was to take risks and be daring in one’s thinking about how cities should reinvent and evolve – even if it means missing the logical mark on the main issues. “It’s better,” Romer advised, “To make statements that might be wrong instead of giving platitudes that we can all agree with.”

For Romer, the equation is simple: public spaces are paramount and urbanization equals opportunity. He argued that, as the world becomes increasingly urban, all citizens have the opportunity to better themselves through change.

Urbanization literally gives billions of people a way to connect to a network of innovation and new opportunity – Paul Romer

Romer advocated taking advantage of all the best services that the government can provide to help cities improve. He reminded the audience how governments had intervened in cities, throughout the centuries, to help, through sheer rule of law, diminish the degrading effects of such urban scourges as crime, disease, and rampant anarchy. For Romer, there is no time like the present when it comes to government being even more active – especially when it comes to land allocation – as cities experience their current growth spurt. “Cities are the level of government that is the most innovative right now,” Romer said.

Romer rounded off his presentation with the one urban issue that invariably takes precedence over any other: crime. If crime becomes too widespread, then that inevitably leads to an exodus (see New York in the 1980s and 1990s, and Detroit today), from the most dangerous parts of a city. That movement rips away at the inner core of a metropolis, undermining all the progress that an urban area has made: “If a city doesn’t manage its crime problem, nothing else it does will make any difference,” said Romer.

Speaker

Paul Romer, University Professor and Director of the Marron Institute, New York University – @paulmromer