In 2007, I decided that we needed to reconceptualize how we thought about economic development. Our new goal should be that when every family thinks about where they want to live and work, they should be able to choose between at least a handful of different cities that were all competing to attract new residents. Now we're a long way away from that goal right now. There are billions of people in developing countries who don't have even a single city that would be willing to welcome them. But the amazing thing about cities is they're worth so much more than it costs to build them. So we could easily supply the world with dozens, maybe hundreds, of new cities.
2007. godine, odlučio sam kako trebamo rekonceptualizirati način na koji razmišljamo o ekonomskom razvoju. Naš novi cilj bi trebao biti da, kada svaka obitelj razmišlja o tome gdje želi živjeti i raditi, omogućimo da ona može izabrati između bar par različitih gradova koji se međusobno natječu da privuku nove građane. Trenutno smo jako daleko od tog cilja. Postoje milijarde ljudi u razvijenim zemljama koji nemaju niti jedan grad koji bi bio voljan primiti ih. Ali, odlična stvar u vezi gradova je kako su oni vrijedni mnogo više nego troškovi njihove izgradnje. Dakle, mi bismo mogli lako opskrbiti svijet s desecima ili čak stotinjak novih gradova.
Now this might sound preposterous to you if you've never thought about new cities. But just substitute apartment building for cities. Imagine half the people who wanted to be in apartments already had them; the other half aren't there yet. You could try and expand the capacity by doing additions on all the existing apartments. But you know what you'd run into is those apartments and the surrounding areas have rules to avoid discomfort and the distractions of construction. So it's extremely hard to do all of those additions. But you could go out someplace brand new, build a brand new apartment building, as long as the rules there were ones that facilitated construction rather than getting in the way. So I proposed that governments create new reform zones big enough to hold cities and gave them a name: charter cities.
To vam sada može zvučati apsurdno ako nikada niste razmišljali o novim gradovima. Ali samo zamislite zgrade sa stanovima kao gradove. Polovina ljudi koja je željela biti u stanovima je već živjela u stanovima; dok druga polovina nije niti imala stanove. Mogli bi probati i proširiti kapacitet gradeći dodatke na svim postojećim stanovima. Ali ono sa čime bi se suočili jest to da ti stanovi i okružnice imaju pravila za izbjegavanje neudobnosti i ometanja gradnje. Prema tome, iznimno je teško napraviti sve te dodatke. Ali mogli biste izaći na neko potpuno novo mjesto, izgraditi potpuno novu zgradu sa stanovima, toliko dugo dok su pravila tamo takva da ubrzavaju i potiču gradnju, a ne da joj stoje na putu. Tako sam ja predložio da vlade stvore nove zone reformi koje su dovoljno velike da uzdržavaju gradove i dao sam im ime: čarter-gradovi.
Later I learned that at about this same time, Javier and Octavio were thinking about the challenge of reform in Honduras. They knew that about 75,000 Hondurans every year would leave to go to the United States, and they wanted to ask, what could they do to make sure that those people could stay and do the same things in Honduras. At one point, Javier said to Octavio, "What if we took some of our empty land -- what if we just gave it to an embassy -- give some to the U.S. embassy; give some to the Canadian embassy -- and then if people want to go work under the rules of Canada or under the rules of the United States, they can go get jobs, do everything they do on those embassy grounds that they would otherwise have to go to Canada or the U.S. to do?"
Kasnije sam naučio da su, u otprilike isto vrijeme, Javier i Octavio razmišljali o izazovu reforme u Hondurasu. Oni su znali da oko 75.000 Hunduraca svake godine odlazi u Sjedinjene Države. Željeli su pitati što mogu učiniti da osiguraju da ti ljudi mogu ostati i ostvariti iste stvari u Hondurasu. U jednom trenutku, Javier je rekao Octaviu: "Što ako bismo uzeli nešto naše prazne zemlje -- što ako bismo to dali ambasadi -- dali bismo je ambasadi Sjedinjenih Država; dali bismo je Kanadskoj ambasadi -- i onda, ako ljudi žele raditi unutar pravila Kanade ili Sjedinjenih Država, mogli bi dobiti posao, raditi sve na posjedu te ambasade za što bi inače otišli u Kanadu ili SAD?"
In the summer of 2009, Honduras went through a wrenching constitutional crisis. At the next regularly scheduled election, Pepe Lobo won in a landslide on a platform that promised reform, but reconciliation as well. He asked Octavio to be his chief of staff. Meanwhile, I was getting ready to give a talk at TEDGlobal. Through a process of refinement, trial and error, a lot of user testing, I tried to boil this complicated concept of charter city down to the bare essentials. The first point was the importance of rules, like those rules that say you can't come in and disturb all the existing apartment holders. We pay a lot of attention to new technologies, but it takes technologies and rules to get progress, and it's usually the rules that hold us back.
U ljeto 2009., Honduras je prošao kroz naglu upravnu krizu. Na redovitim ugovorenim izborima koji su slijedili, Pepe Lobo je odnio pobijedu na platformi koja je obećavala reformu, ali također i usklađenje. On je pitao Octavia da bude njegov šef osoblja. U međuvremenu, ja sam se pripremao održati govor na TEDGlobal-u. Kroz proces usavršavanja, pokušaja i pogrešaka, puno korisničkog isprobavanja, želio sam doći do osnove tog kompliciranog koncepta čarter-grada. Prva stavka bila je važnost pravila, poput onih pravila koja govore da ne smiješ doći i uznemiravati sve postojeće stanovnike. Mi obraćamo veliku pozornost na nove tehnologije, ali potrebne su tehnologije i pravila da se dođe do napretka. I obično su pravila ta koja nas sputavaju.
In the fall of 2010, a friend from Guatemala sent Octavio a link to the TEDTalk. He showed it to Javier. They called me. They said, "Let's present this to the leaders of our country." So in December we met in Miami, in a hotel conference room. I tried to explain this point about how valuable cities are, how much more valuable they are than they cost. And I used this slide showing how valuable the raw land is in a place like New York City: notice, land that's worth thousands of dollars, in some cases, per square meter. But it was a fairly abstract discussion, and at some point when there was a pause, Octavio said, "Paul, maybe we could watch the TEDTalk."
U jesen 2010., moj prijatelj iz Gvatemale je poslao Octaviu poveznicu za TED govor. Pokazao je govor Javieru. Nazvali su me. Rekli su: "Pokažimo ovo predvodnicima države." U prosincu smo otišli u Miami, u konferencijsku sobu hotela. Pokušao sam objasniti kako su gradovi vrijedni, koliko mnogo više vrijede nego što koštaju. Koristio sam slajd koji je pokazivao koliko je vrijedna gola zemlja u mjestu kao što je New York City. U nekim slučajevima, zemlja je vrijedna tisuće dolara, po metru kvadratnom. Ali to je bila prilično apstraktna rasprava, i u jednom trenutku kada je bila stanka, Octavio je rekao, "Paul, možda bismo mogli pogledati TED govor."
(Laughing)
(Pljesak)
So the TEDTalk laid out in very simple terms, a charter city is a place where you start with uninhabited land, a charter that specifies the rules that will apply there and then a chance for people to opt in, to go live under those rules or not. So I was asked by the president of Honduras who said that we need to do this project, this is important, this could be the way forward for our country. I was asked to come to Tegucigalpa and talk again on January fourth and fifth. So I presented another fact-filled lecture that included a slide like this, which tried to make the point that, if you want to create a lot of value in a city, it has to be very big. This is a picture of Denver, and the outline is the new airport that was built in Denver. This airport alone covers more than 100 square kilometers. So I was trying to persuade the Hondurans, if you build a new city, you've got to start with a site that's at least 1,000 square kilometers. That's more than 250 hundred-thousand acres. Everybody applauded politely. The faces in the audience were very serious and attentive. The leader of the congress came up on stage and said, "Professor Romer, thank you very much for your lecture, but maybe we could watch the TEDTalk. I've got it here on my laptop." So I sat down, and they played the TEDTalk.
Tako da je TED govor iznio na veoma jednostavan način, kako je čarter-grad mjesto gdje možeš započeti s nenaseljenom zemljom, čarterom (čarter - darovnica) koja određuje pravila koja će se ondje provoditi s prilikom koju možeš dati ljudima da biraju između više opcija, hoće li živjeti unutar tih pravila ili ne. Predsjednik Hondurasa mi je rekao da trebamo učiniti ovaj projekt, da je to važno, i da bi to mogao biti put za napredak naše države. Zamolio me da dođem u Tegucigalpu i ponovno održim govor 4. i 5. siječnja. Pa sam održao još jedno činjenično predavanje koje je uključivalo slajd poput ovog, koji je pokušavao objasniti ukazanje da, ako želiš izgraditi puno vrijednosti u gradu, on mora biti jako velik. Ovo je slika Denvera a ova kontura je nova zračna luka koja je izgrađena u Denveru. Samo ta zračna luka pokriva više od 100 kvadratnih kilometara. Pokušavao sam uvjeriti Hondurance da, ako gradiš novi grad, moraš početi s lokacijom veličine najmanje 1000 kilometara kvadratnih. To je više od 250 stotina tisuća jutara. Svi su uljudno zapljeskali. Lica u publici su bila veoma ozbiljna i pozorna. Vođa kongresa je došao na pozornicu i rekao: "Profesore Romer, puno vam hvala na vašem predavanju, ali možda bismo mogli pogledati TED govor. Imam ga ovdje na laptopu." Sjeo sam, a oni su pustili TED govor.
And it got to the essence, which is that a new city could offer new choices for people. There would be a choice of a city which you could go to which could be in Honduras, instead of hundreds of miles away in the North. And it also involved new choices for leaders. Because the leaders in the government there in Honduras would need help from partner countries, who could benefit from partner countries who help them set up the rules in this charter and the enforcement, so everybody can trust that the charter really will be enforced. And the insight of President Lobo was that that assurance of enforcement that I was thinking about as a way to get the foreign investors to come in and build the city could be equally important for all the different parties in Honduras who had suffered for so many years from fear and distrust.
I došlo je do osnove, a koja je da bi novi grad mogao ponuditi nove izbore za ljude. Postojao bi izbor grada u koji biste mogli ići koji bi bio u Hondurasu, umjesto na stotinama milja dalekom Sjeveru. I uključivao bi nove izbore za rukovoditelje. Zato što bi glavari u vladi tamo u Hondurasu trebali pomoć od zemalja-suradnika koje bi bile povlaštene od zemalja-suradnika koje njima pomažu izložiti pravila u darovnici i provedbi, tako da svi mogu vjerovati da ugovor zaista može biti proveden. Uvid predsjednika Loboa je bio taj da je osiguranje provedbe, o kojoj sam ja razmišljao, kao načinu pomoću kojeg bi se dobilo strane ulagače da dođu i izgrade grad, jednako važno za sve stranke u Hondurasu koje su patile tolikih godina od straha i nepovjerenja.
We went and looked at a site. This picture's from there. It easily could hold a thousand square kilometers. And shortly thereafter, on January 19th, they voted in the congress to amend their constitution to have a constitutional provision that allows for special development regions. In a country which had just gone through this wrenching crisis, the vote in the congress in favor of this constitutional amendment was 124 to one. All parties, all factions in society, backed this. To be part of the constitution, you actually have to pass it twice in the congress. On February 17th they passed it again with another vote of 114 to one.
Otišli smo i pogledali lokaciju. Ovo je slika lokacije. Lako bi mogla imati tisuću kvadratnih kilometara. Kratko nakon toga, 19. siječnja, oni su glasali u kongresu za izmjenu njihovog uređenja za proviziju uređenja, koja dozvoljava posebna područja za razvoj. U zemlji koja je upravo prošla kroz naglu krizu, glas u kongresu za pristanak te upravne izmjene je bio 124 prema jedan. Sve stranke i sve grupe su poduprle izmjenu. Ako nešto želi postati dio uređenja, mora proći dva puta u kongresu. 17. veljače je opet prošlo u kongresu s ponovnim glasom od 114 prema jedan.
Immediately after that vote, on February 21st to the 24th, a delegation of about 30 Hondurans went to the two places in the world that are most interested in getting into the city building business. One is South Korea. This is a picture of a big, new city center that's being built in South Korea -- bigger than downtown Boston. Everything you see there was built in four years, after they spent four years getting the permits. The other place that's very interested in city building is Singapore. They've actually built two cities already in China and are preparing the third.
Odmah nakon tog glasanja, od 21. do 24. veljače, delegacija od otprilike 30 Honduranaca je otišla na dva mjesta na svijetu koja su najviše zainteresirana u stavljanje grada u građevinski posao. Jedno takvo mjesto je Južna Koreja. Ovo je slika velikog, novog gradskog centra koji se gradi u Južnoj Koreji -- veći je nego centar Bostona. Sve ovo što vidite je izgrađeno u četiri godine, nakon što su proveli četiri godine u dobivanju dozvola. Drugo mjesto koje ima veliko zanimanje za izgradnju grada je Singapur. Oni su zapravo već izgradili dva grada u Kini i pripremaju treći.
So if you think about this practically, here's where we are. They've got a site; they're already thinking about this site for the second city. They're putting in place a legal system that could allow for managers to come in, and also an external legal system. One country has already volunteered to let its supreme court be the court of final appeal for the new judicial system there. There's designers and builders of cities who are very interested. They even can bring with them some financing. But the one thing you know they've already solved is that there's lots of tenants. There's lots of businesses that would like to locate in the Americas, especially in a place with a free trade zone, and there's lots of people who'd like to go there. Around the world, there's 700 million people who say they'd like to move permanently someplace else right now.
Dakle, ako mislite praktično o ovome, evo gdje smo mi. Imaju mjesto; oni već razmišljaju o ovom mjestu za drugi grad. Stavljaju mjesto u zakonski sustav koji bi omogućio da dođu menadžeri i također da se ostvari vanjski zakonski sustav. Jedna zemlja je već dobrovoljno sudjelovala da dopusti da njen nadležni sud bude najpoželjniji model za pravni sustav u gradu. Postoje dizajneri i građevinari gradova koji su jako zainteresirani. Oni čak mogu sa sobom donijeti nešto financija. Ali jedna stvar je, znate, koju su oni već riješili da već postoji puno zakupaca. Postoji puno poduzeća koja bi željela smjestiti Amerikance, osobito na mjestu sa zonom slobodnog tržišta, i postoji puno ljudi koji bi željeli ići ondje. Diljem svijeta, postoji 700 milijuna ljudi koji govore kako bi se željeli dugoročno preseliti na neko drugo mjesto.
There's a million a year who leave Latin America to go to the United States. Many of these are a father who has to leave his family behind to go get a job -- sometimes a single mother who has to get enough money to even pay for food or clothing. Sadly, sometimes there are even children who are trying to get reunited with their parents that they haven't seen, in some cases, for a decade.
Postoji milijun ljudi godišnje koji napuštaju Latinsku Ameriku i odlaze u Sjedinjene Države. Mnogi su od njih očevi koji moraju napustiti obitelj zbog pronalaska posla -- ponekad samohrana majka, koja mora nabaviti dovoljno novca da samo plati hranu i odjeću. Nažalost, nekad čak i djeca, koja pokušavaju pronaći svoje roditelje koje nisu vidjeli, u nekim slučajevima, jedno desetljeće.
So what kind of an idea is it to think about building a brand new city in Honduras? Or to build a dozen of these, or a hundred of these, around the world? What kind of an idea is it to think about insisting that every family have a choice of several cities that are competing to attract new residents? This is an idea worth spreading. And my friends from Honduras asked me to say thank you, TED.
Dakle, kakva je ovo ideja, razmišljati o gradnji novog grada u Hondurasu? Ili o gradnju desetaka takvih, ili čak stotinjak diljem svijeta? Kakva je to ideja, razmišljati o inzistiranju da svaka obitelj ima izbor između nekoliko gradova koji se natječu da privuku nove stanovnike? To je ideja vrijedna širenja. I moji prijatelji iz Hondurasa su me zamolili da zahvalim TED-u.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)