Building Private Cities is Strata on a Grand Scale

I’ve been reading a post called Cities as Hotels by Alex Tabarrok in Current Affairs, Economics, Political Science where he describes a new phenomenon of corporations building huge property developments in Africa, India and China.

In the post he discusses Gurgaon in India which has grown to house 1.5 million in 30 years, Tatu City, the $5 billion center that Renaissance Partners, the investment unit of Moscow-based Renaissance Group, is building from scratch outside the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, and the plans by Renaissance Partners to build a 6,400 acre city in the Democratic Republic of Congo and similar projects in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Rwanda.

Apparently, 6,400 acres is a small city (it’s about the size of Apple’s home of Cupertino CA) but enough that developers want to build public services such as city-wide sewage, parks, roads, an electric plant and grid and so forth.

And Alex says that private cities are happening now because Africa, India, and China are urbanising more rapidly than has ever occurred in human history. For instance, in Africa, the number of urban dwellers are projected to increase by nearly 400 million, in India at least 250 million will move to cities and in China more than 400 million will move to cities in just the next 20 years.

So, this rapid urbanization is an opportunity to remake cities anew.

And, of course, they will be structured and administered as some kind of strata or community title scheme. 

So, are you ready for strata on a grand scale?

Francesco …