Metrodomination

[Hygro]

Cities have increasing returns to population scale. This includes population-driven increasing returns to economy.

This means every person you add adds on average more than the previous person's gross product. That is to say, if one person adds $20k in economic activity the next person adds $21k, but not literally those numbers.

Other things that do this in urban environments are all other social interactions. This means income inequality increases as well, so the more you add the more "naturally" a city is winner take all..

But we live in democracies in which politics has ownership of the economic... when we so choose to spread it around or not.

If a city wanted to pwn all the other cities it should institute the largest most open universal basic income it can. Rapid fire gentrification, but of a slightly different path: This will attract vagrants seeking free money, who will bring down prices and exclusivity. Then the art people will move in for exciting urban low prices. Then the hipsters, then the fancy shops and yuppies, then the schools then the families. All the while the metro grows and can afford more of the process.

In theory this scales forever. Considerations are eggs-in-one-basket vulnerability to attack and existing residents never ever like this kind of thing.

But the point is that if a strong enough city to begin with institutes a UBI it will grow and increasingly pay for itself until it faces competition and levels out.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'll have to think about this, but my initial thoughts are these:

UBI is one way to reduce poverty (the two others are provide service sector jobs or help poor people marry or join households to increase household income). Increasing UBI will add to the disposable income of a community and that will increase service sector jobs. It will not increase economic based jobs which grow an economy. I don't think that the sequence of dominoes you project will happen. to create an Austin, you need economic based jobs added to the mix.

 

[Takhisis]

What about environmental and societal damage? I live in a city larger than several European countries and also 1/2 as large as the rest of the country put together, in terms of population.

 

[Hygro]

Well cities reduce environmental damage per capita and increase in effect how far a barrel of oil goes.

The theory behind is exactly that/ theoretical. But if these are true enough, this sequence should well be automatic.

 

[Hrothbern]

I think urbanisation is mostly (so far) a very chaotic process, where almost every single citizen goes for the best he can get, and free market pricing affects everything.
And from there a lot of the theoretical social-economic benefits of dense and big cities are greatly diminished.

Cities, or perhaps better described, areas of high population and job density, CAN have very high utilisation rates of infrastructural investments, like roads, public transport, utilities, sewers, schools, shops, etc.
From there you would expect lowest cost for all base needs. In a plan economy like China complete cities have been build on that principle. Most are being used. Some still completely empty since years: the unborn cities.
In Real Life however, in a free market, the price is mostly higher than in smaller cities. Even the ghettos around the high priced areas are mostly more expensive than more rural ghettos.
Migration, whether domestic or international, with lowered hurdles from geographic mobility and cultural globalism, is mostly an uncontrolled phenomenon, ruled by brute forces and the positive feedback between availability of labor <=> availability of jobs.

Trying to utilise possible environmental and public economical benefits of urbanisation is a real challenge because the main driver is completely chaotic.
In my own country, the Netherlands, we have a history of trying to control urbanisation to a high degree, to keep rural agricultural rural for high food production and concentrate people in dense residential areas whereby walking, bicycling should cover house-job travel, driven by the trauma of food shortage of WW1.
Since the last 50 years, after more and more people got a car, there has been an ongoing political battle about the density of the residential areas. The political right going to private suburbs housing where everybody has a nice garden, having low density. (and needing a car, later two cars). The political left for public dense flat housing (4-5 floors) with a bit of public green. No car needed for travelling to job or shops, and kids that could walk or bicycle to schools. High density, low infra cost.
an ongoing battle that is slowly lost.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Urbanization has been a very mixed bag so far from the slums of Rio to the ghost cities of China and urban blight of western cities. I think that Hygro is raising the question of what happens to that process if you add UBI to the equation as an incentive to move to the cities. The Netherlands has land constraints; China doesn't. The impacts and solutions will be different in each place.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I went into this thread thinking it would be about something completely different....

 

[Drewcifer]

It is an open question as to whether the economic benefits that come from large scale urbanization come from the number of people, the skills of a specific subset of those people, or the infrastructure that arises to serve the large population. A few years ago I read an article that suggested that the single greatest predictor of economic and income growth for an American metro was whether or not it had a real international airport.

Obviously 20 million people in a city in the developing world don't have the same impact as in Tokyo or New York.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I've been wondering whether and how much Detroit serves as a useful case study (or a warning) for American cities, or if it's just an outlier. To my knowledge, no major American metropolis has had such a precipitous decline. New York City had a kind of "dark age" in the 1960s-1980s (just this morning I was reading a review of Abel Ferrera's Fear City, a lesser-known entry in the "New York is Hell" genre) but it didn't collapse and contract the way Detroit has. Quite the opposite; today, it's hard to imagine that New York was once a dump. I've heard that Pittsburgh has undergone a real Renaissance in the last decade, but I don't know if it ever sunk to the depths of Detroit. I think Baltimore is still in a deep funk, maybe similar to where New York and Pittsburgh once were, or maybe it's on the road to becoming the next Detroit. Anyway, I don't know whether or how a UBI would have helped any of these cities, or others that find themselves in similar straits.

 

[Drewcifer]

Since 2010, Detroit's MSA population has grown by 0.39%, which isn't very much but at least it isn't a decline. On the other hand, Cleveland declined by 0.89%, Toledo, Ohio declined by 1.04%, Youngstown, Ohio declined by 4.21% and Flint, Michigan by 4.32% which suggests that size matters even for Rust Belt post industrial basket cases.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Metro areas succeed as long as the economy of the area grows faster than the population. When it doesn't, the area declines. Population declines happen after the economy fails to keep pace, tax revenues drop off and services are cut and the loss of income causes the service sector economy to collapse.

 

[Hrothbern]

Urbanization has been a very mixed bag so far from the slums of Rio to the ghost cities of China and urban blight of western cities. I think that Hygro is raising the question of what happens to that process if you add UBI to the equation as an incentive to move to the cities. The Netherlands has land constraints; China doesn't. The impacts and solutions will be different in each place.

Before answering that UBI question of Hygro in the equation in an explicit way instead of only showing the brute chaos of drivers.
First something on your post below as stepping stone for that.

Metro areas succeed as long as the economy of the area grows faster than the population. When it doesn't, the area declines. Population declines happen after the economy fails to keep pace, tax revenues drop off and services are cut and the loss of income causes the service sector economy to collapse.

Yes
Adding to that
Whereby the decline goes faster, more extreme and recovery more difficult and later.... because of the inertia of the real estate rental and property market price.
From shops needing high prices because they pay so much rent, from employees needing high salaries because they pay so much rent, mortgage, household spendings... to companies needing to pay high rent and high wages not to lose their essential employees.

Agree ?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yes, no one likes a decline in their standard of living, so high costs can persist long after the market has collapsed.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I don't see any reason for taking the presumptions in the op as good fish

 

[Bootstoots]

Cities can't afford to offer much of a UBI - their revenues are nowhere near high enough for that. Even ignoring that issue, you're extrapolating from a general pattern that might not hold once you change the incentives.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

In theory this scales forever. Considerations are eggs-in-one-basket vulnerability to attack and existing residents never ever like this kind of thing.

Not just 'attack.' The obvious counterexample is Los Angeles. Disaster response to refugees from a calamity in a relatively tiny city like New Orleans severely taxed the capability of the fourth largest US city; Houston. Houston absorbed about ten percent of the population of New Orleans. If (well, realistically when) a natural disaster uproots a significant fraction of the population of Los Angeles, where are they going to go? Ten percent of the population of the LA metro area is more than the population of a lot of states. Your mega city needs to be located in a disaster free environment, and I'm not sure where you would find that.

 

[Hrothbern]

Right
So we have that big macro bussiness cycle of the big cities. Growing fast or steady up to the moment that the economy of the city grows slower than the population or even declines, with on top the chaos factor of the individual behaviour of residents wanting to live in better neighborhoods segregating themselves from where they were, putting into motion positive feedbacks of city area implosions (like leaving to green expensive suburbs).
A dynamic chaos, everywhere differing.

Well... that's what free market is.
The invisible hand in chaos and smaller/bigger business cycles.

Essential is however that the enormous effeciency of a big city is not going 100% to the citizens and companies supplying jobs, but it is creamed off by the real estate owners.
And in free market terms: rightfully so... because location is the most fundamental value..... the rest is replaceable

So... more specific to that UBI in a big city

But we live in democracies in which politics has ownership of the economic... when we so choose to spread it around or not.

Well... that remains to be seen in the current power balance.... but let us ignore that....................... let us assume that the people have indeed the power and use it to get a city with UBI

Let's see (together) how utopian that is.... whether for example the following could work, where the real estate market pricing is not creamed off towards the really rich, but is used to pay the UBI:

* A new city of adequate scale size, to benefit from all the efficiencies, is build by the government, to be operated by the city council (under the condition that real estate cannot be sold, and any new real estate and infra goes by the same construction)
* That city is "immediately" filled up with economy and people (just to keep the story simple)
* That city pays the government an interest rate that is the same as the government pays for her bonds.
* The city council behaves regarding local tax, fundings and whatever in the same way as a free market city council (again for the sake of simplicity of the story)
* That city uses for renting out her buildings and ground the same rental level as if it would be free market pricing (again for the sake of simplicity of the story)
* The government is responsible for the minimum level of UBI, to prevent a race to the bottom between city councils of UBI-cities (driven by the companies in them by demanding lower rents for themselves at the expense of the UBI)
* The profit made on real estate is used to pay the UBI in that city. (An adequate surplus goes in reserves for economical down times of the cycle)
* There is some kind of government general regulation on the "immigrants" and city policies.
......* To prevent that "everybody" in the country goes to that one city
......* To prevent that around that city unregulated "slave" cities come into being, supplying labor without UBI, a kind of Bantustans, that would make the city citizens the privileged (new) caste.
......* To prevent that a (too big) social segregation between cities take place
......* There is certainly more here where governmental regulation will be needed to prevent developments in city policies that will most certainly not be in line with the intention of Hygro's case in the OP. And what about pensioners etc.

Assumptions:
A. I guess that the difference in cost price of such a green field city and the actual market price in big cities is so huge, that on top the difference in interest at govn bond level and the commercial real estate interest, between them added to the current social spending on unemployed is more than an UBI.
B. I guess that the human nature to enjoy the benefits of some more money from a job on top of the UBI is strong enough to dismiss the counter argument that once UBI is there, too many people are encouraged to not work anymore

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But the point is that if a strong enough city to begin with institutes a UBI it will grow and increasingly pay for itself until it faces competition and levels out.

The question is what you're left with if everyone adopts it and it "levels out".

 

[Hrothbern]

The question is what you're left with if everyone adopts it and it "levels out".

It will level out
but imo at a higher level of wellbeing and income for "the many".

* More social security leading to better performance and more happiness of the vulnerable. Read "Why Having Too Little Means So Much" to see how important. Here a link to a review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/07/scarcity-sendhil-mullainathan-shafir-review That book can be a real eyeopener.
* more equality from higher base level income (and if you follow my post above from redirecting real estate value changes from private to public to higher UBI)

 

[Takhisis]

Well cities reduce environmental damage per capita and increase in effect how far a barrel of oil goes.

The theory behind is exactly that/ theoretical. But if these are true enough, this sequence should well be automatic.

Are there at least some pieces of data that would point out in this direction, or is it entirely theoretical?
Also, would the increase to the effect of a barrel of oil also apply to renewable sources of energy such as solar or wind power?

I went into this thread thinking it would be about something completely different....

You really thought you'd be allowed to whip your loved ones in an underground train waggon, didn't you?