All Cities Were Created

 Elton Economic Development & Policies, Investing

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VENTURES AFRICA – As far back as biblical times, rationality was applied to the establishment of cities and surrounding infrastructure. Cities today are over populated, from Brazil, Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles, London, Johannesburg, Lagos and Mexico. But the concept of smart cities, technically and realistically do not increase the capacity for more population.
What do we know? We know that none of these cities existed before. They were built on the premise of economic foundations. In many cities, natural resources foundations for economic prosperity have been depleted and overcrowding, and air pollution is at an all-time high. I remember visiting Shanghai late 2012. What a city. It’s concept of
structural and logical existence is exemplary. However, I thought that my headaches where due to altitude – not so – they were due to the levels of pollution I had never experienced. Even in this regard Shanghai cannot compare to the deathly pollution levels of Beijing.
The counter train of thought to smart cities and urbanisation extends from resource depletion, equal distribution of finished goods, opportunities for industrialisation in new spaces reducing the costs of finished goods on the consumer and lowering the costs accessible water.
In Africa this theory could prove to be useful for border-locked countries that need to develop new cities and specialisations in their respective niche areas.
Urbanization is the process by which there is an increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas. Particularly in South Africa the rate of urbanization in has been exponential since the 1950’s. Urbanization brings and leaves huge deficits in skills, local economic activity and retains higher mortality rates due to the lack of investment in outer lying areas.
Africa is probably left and maybe guilty of embracing historical necessity. It is understandable that technology and methods of life are adopted from Europe especially, thus changing the rich heritage of African rural life. Should Africa not be seeking to retain the cultural heritage of rural Africa and only enhance the lives of future generations by allowing technology to become part of their development – not their only means to development?
By urbanism we mean a way of life, a set of institutions, a kind of social organization – meaning we are now taking larger amounts of people into the same size of apportioned land and making infusing different cultures, values and social structures into a cramped city space. We ought not to forget that the global economy growth forecast has shrunk from (The World Bank) 2.8 percent this year, down from a January projection of 3.2 percent.
In 1750, India accounted for one-quarter of the world’s manufacturing output, but by 1900 that was down to 2 percent. The West became more productive as a result of the Industrial Revolution, and India lost much of its leading export sector, textiles. While the data is fragmentary, the best estimates show that India’s living standards declined through the middle of the 19th century and that its economy retrogressed, even as it borrowed some technological improvements from the West. India just didn’t do enough to move toward production on a larger scale or with better machines. This story of India’s loss to foreign competition is documented in “De-industrialization in 18th and 19th Century India,” a paper by David Clingingsmith, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, an emeritus professor of economics at Harvard.
Already we are seeing the signs that urbanisation and smart cities – even taken from the one in a time strength of India, that smart cities in terms of access to resources and the equal distribution therefore is not by any means sustainable.
If we consider Nevada in the US, still home to Sin City and one of the largest consumers of electrical power, is now suffering from a severe drought and insurmountable strains on water supply for the most basic of things. This shortage extends significantly in the rest of California – also heart to proportionate urbanisation.
Till this day as taken from days of old, urbanisation is synonymous with a list of English words reflecting the idea that urban life is ideally associated with some kind of refinement of thought or behaviour of a people and this assumption then lends to the counter that it is impossible for these words to have meaning in another geographical area – without the pretext of being called a smart city.
Pundits and industry insiders expect smart cities to become a sizable market, with projections of nearly $40 billion spent on smart-cities technologies by 2016. And real estate experts predict that smart cities will in the future be attractive to the educated work force and will therefore become real-estate gold.
Maybe let’s tag a bit down memory lane. I started my career in Port Elizabeth in South Africa. This place till this day is known merely for two things, as the friendly city and for its wind. Maybe friendly because there is very little to do here and the wind is constant. With any shadow of a doubt, not in my mind, but in experience and importantly, the structure of my experience, I out shadow most corporate employees simply because in the smaller city, your scope of experience out ways by far, your pay-check.
As further proof, that these thoughts are well etched in the minds of top business people, in 2009 ‘SOME’ of America’s leading billionaires met secretly to consider how their wealth could be invested to slow world population growth and speedily introduce in health and education solutions.
I the world’s billionaires are concerned about over population, it could be a sign of growing concerns for security, food security, access to resources. But one is for sure, it would mean that this argument of creating new living environments, will certainly be the forefront agenda economic development and inter and cross-border investments.