Jane Jacobs wasn’t optimistic about the future of civilisation. ‘We show signs of rushing headlong into a Dark Age,’ she declares in Dark Age Ahead, her final book published in 2004.  She evidences a breakdown in family and civic life, universities which focus more on credentialling than on actually imbuing knowledge in its participants, broken feedback mechanisms in government and business, and the abandonment of science in favour of ‘pseudo-scientific’ methods. Jacobs’ prose is, as always, rich, convincing and successful in making the reader see the importance of her claims. Yet the argument that we are spiralling into a new Dark Age, similar to that which followed the fall of the Roman Empire, is not quite complete and I remain unconvinced that the areas she identified point towards collapse as opposed to merely things we could, and should, work to improve.

Let us start with the idea that families are ‘rigged to fail,’ as she puts it in chapter two. Jacobs, urbanist at heart, cites ‘inhumanely long car commutes’ stemming from the disbanding of urban transit systems, rising housing costs, and a breakdown in ‘community resources’ – the result of increasingly low-dense forms of urban development – as a significant reason why families are now set up for failure. She suggests our days are filled with increasingly vacuous activities, leading to the rise of ‘sitcom families’ which ‘can and do fill isolated hours’ at the expense of ‘live friends.’ That phenomenon has now been replaced by the ‘smartphone family’ where time spent on TikTok, and consuming other forms of digital media have supplanted the ‘sitcom’ family of the past. There has been significant literature on the detrimental effects of digital technologies to our physical and mental health, not least in Jonathan Haidt’s most recent book, The Anxious Generation. A similar picture is painted by Timothy Carney in his book Alienated America, where drawing on both his travels throughout the United States and on significant empirical data, Carney shows how significant parts of the United States have witnessed a complete breakdown in community and civic life over the past several decades. And yet – it is not clear that all of this points to a catastrophic ‘decline’ in civilisation as Jacobs puts it. We are fortunate to live in a country where there continue to be dynamic pockets of civic and social engagement. One might look at New York City, the suburbs of Washington D.C., or even the communities of Upstate New York, which I was recently fortunate enough to visit during a friend’s wedding, to see that there continue to be exceptions. This should lead to hope and optimism, for it suggests that whilst there are very real problems, so too do we have the tools to solve them and areas from which to draw inspiration. We could, and should, work to ensure our cities permit mobility, create the dense, lively and liveable neighbourhoods so brilliantly described by Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and encourage civic life by creating spaces instrumental to these activities. Yet so too should we recognise that different patterns for this exist, including in suburbs like Arlington and beyond. That diversity does not mean we are doomed for failure – quite the opposite as it can be seen as a form of experimentation and pluralism of values.

Now let us turn to the idea that our universities focus primarily on ‘credentialing’ rather than ‘educating’ – that higher education is now pursued primarily as a status symbol as opposed to for the inherent value it imparts to its participants. As a rising senior at Columbia University, one of these elite institutions, anecdotal evidence may be relevant here: there is definitely a pressure to excel in one’s GPA and secure the best grades possible, even to the detriment of actually learning. I have observed, amongst friends and coursemates, a tendency to pick classes that are easier and where teachers grade more nicely purely because of how it will look when applying to grad school and other professional endeavours. This is, in part, the price of a move towards meritocracy where individuals are (in theory) assessed on talent rather than on their connections or class and which therefore requires ever-more standardised measurements of individual success. Yet at the same time, coming to the United States has revealed that there exists a flourishing realm of liberal arts colleges and institutions that aim to go beyond pure credentialling and that do value education for its own sake. Hillsdale, Amherst and Middlebury are excellent examples of this. The pressure to attend elite schools goes beyond the status; these places are genuinely filled with some of the smartest and brightest people I have met, both from a faculty and student perspective. Jacobs is right to warn about the danger of higher education being sold to students as a ticket to some ‘elite’ strata of society, particularly given the significant expense and debt that students incur. And indeed university is not the right path for everyone, research has shown that other factors make a lot more difference to one’s professional success. Whilst Jacobs’ warnings are therefore valid, the issue is less acute in the United States where there is a significant financial reason to select a major and school that will impart actual knowledge and more of a problem in the United Kingdom and in Europe where subsidised higher education does mean that without a college degree, one will face significant difficulties in securing a position afterwards.

In the remaining portions of Dark Age Ahead, Jacobs identifies several other areas in very real need of reform, from the breakdown in self-policing of business and government to the abandonment of the scientific technique in areas like ‘traffic management.’ Her examples are vivid and teach the reader something, but they again fail to point to a wholesale breakdown in society as it is today. Most significant, however, is Jacobs’ analysis of the ‘dysfunctional’ financial arrangements of local and national governments which expand on Cities and the Wealth of Nations. National governments, in their current form, have a set of incentives at cross-purposes with how economies actually grow. By funnelling money away from cities and into ‘dead-end’ economic causes – in effect dispensing largesse – governments detract from the ability of individuals and firms within those cities to reinvest, innovate and find ever-more ingenious ways of ‘adding new work to old.’ Welfare, subsidies, and redistribution cannot drive a civilisation’s success. Only innovation and progress can, and if current trends persist, we may spiral into decline.

Where Dark Age Ahead excels in its analysis of the historical and theoretical concept of Dark Ages. The book ought to be read more for its historical analysis and its applicability to political economy and economics, than for its analysis of the contemporary issues identified, for as important as these are, more recent and accurate analyses can be found in Jacobs’ other books and those of other scholars. This book underscores the importance of not taking our institutions for granted, of promoting entrepreneurship and innovation so as to move ahead, and of constantly revisiting the Great Thinkers from the past.

In conclusion, Dark Age Ahead contains some real golden nuggets and makes for a compelling read for those wanting to understand the historical dynamics of dark ages and some of the dangers we currently face. Yet for the reader unaccustomed to the work of Jane Jacobs, I would instead suggest reading The Economy of Cities, which better urges one to rethink where growth happens and why cities are the driving force of civilisation.

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Promotors of recently developed cities ranging from Nusantara, the freshly built capital of Indonesia, to Neom, Saudi Arabia’s futurist urban paradise, advertise them as breakthroughs in urban living. But does the world need new cities?

This article appeared originally in Caos Planejadoand is reprinted here with the publisher’s permission.

Promotors of recently developed cities ranging from Nusantara, the freshly built capital of Indonesia, to Neom, Saudi Arabia’s futurist urban paradise, advertise them as breakthroughs in urban living. But does the world need new cities? Are new urban forms likely to be better than the old ones? And why, if they are so wonderful, have so few new cities succeeded in attracting a large population?

Does the world need new cities?

Over time, the evolution of villages into prosperous cities has primarily been driven by their proximity to trade. The profits from trade were invested in amenities like theaters, parks, universities, restaurants, cafés, and many other attractions that made these cities appealing beyond their trade advantage.

During the Industrial Revolution, the development of railways created new locations with advantageous accessibility to trade. For instance, Atlanta and Vancouver rose to prominence thanks to the trade potential of newly built railways. However, in the twenty-first century, existing cities already occupy nearly all the locations most favorable for trade.

There are a few new opportunities for creating cities in favorable locations. Global warming, by opening trade routes closer to the poles, could produce the potential for new cities. China’s Belt and Road might also create the right conditions for cities to develop by establishing rapid trade land routes across Central Asian countries.

Unfortunately, most people who promote new cities today are not motivated by trade opportunities, but by the imperfections of the cities in which they already live. Planners and architects are convinced that they could create the perfect city, where their innovative design would prevent congestion, crime, and pollution while providing well-paying jobs within walking distance of affordable homes. And, of course, all energy consumed would be carbon-free. After all, they reason, our experience with everyday objects, like cars and smartphones, confirms that trying to repair an old, obsolete one does not make much sense when compared to the ease of buying the latest model. Why shouldn’t it be the same for cities? Designing new cities have nothing to do with the dsign of cars or smartphones. Cities are built by the people and firms that decide to move into them. They have no objective functions like a smart phone. People move to cities because of the qualities of the people who are already there. Not because of their infrastructure  wonderful technology.

Are proposed new urban forms likely to be better than existing ones?

How do we measure whether a city is successful? We could rank cities by their capacity to attract the most visitors, their appeal to migrants, or, more abstractly, by their livability.

The five cities most frequented by international visitors are Bangkok, Paris, London, Dubai, and Singapore, while the cities with the largest populations are Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, São Paolo, and Mexico City. According to criteria selected by The Economist, the five most livable cities are Vienna, Copenhagen, Zurich, Calgary, and Vancouver. (It is interesting to note that the most livable cities do not attract the most migrants or visitors.) The fifteen cities on these lists have grown and thrived because of the accretion of voluntary migrants over a long time. Nobody designed them to be ideal cities from the start; they just adapted successfully to circumstances.

The only designed cities that have reached a significant population size are all new capital cities like Canberra, Brasilia, Islamabad, Chandigarh, and Abuja. Their apparent success is not surprising. There are two main challenges for anybody wanting to build a new city in an isolated location: first, how to attract the initial population, and second, how to finance the enormous costs of building a city’s infrastructure before a productive population can pay for it through taxes. The national governments building these capital cities responded readily to these challenges. Civil servants, who constituted the initial population, had no choice but to live where the government gave them a job and accommodation. When this initial population had settled, voluntary migrants followed to provide them with services. The second challenge, the long negative cash flow, was also easily solved. The government used taxpayer money to subsidize the whole, expensive enterprise.

The only truly successful new cities—excluding capital cities—were not really new. Instead, they were satellite towns of existing metropolises. For instance, this is the case for the five satellite towns—Bundang, Ilsan, Pyeongchon, Sanbon, and Joongdong—built around Seoul to tackle housing shortages, which are now thriving communities in their own right. Trying to structure expanding suburbs with satellite city centers is a worthy endeavor, but quite different from the self-sufficient cities built in the desert, which urban gurus usually advertise. Rather than the cities of the future, they are more likely to wind up as castles in the air.

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Continuing this series of book reviews on Jane Jacobs’ works, I now turn to Cities and the Wealth of Nations. But there is already a fantastic piece on the Market Urbanism website, by Matthew Robare, who reviews this book and outlines what Jacobs overlooks in her analysis. So, this piece takes a slightly different angle: inspired by (but not limited to) Jacobs’ ideas, it aims to highlight what mayors, governors and urban policymakers could do differently if they are serious about developing their cities into economic powerhouses. Here are some of the most important takeaways from this book and also how they can be expanded upon.

(1) Focus on cultivating import-replacement

The economies of cities do not grow out of nothing. They grow by adding productive new forms of work to old ones, by innovating, and by being cultivators of new ideas and techniques. This process of cataclysmic growth – that Jane Jacobs describes as ‘import-replacement – occurs when a city takes its existing imports and builds upon them, either improving its production through lowering costs, increasing quality, or innovating. The market for these additional goods can either be found within the city itself or serves to expand the city’s exports. These exports, in turn, bring in additional resources to either acquire additional imports or be reinvested into fuelling the processes that fuel import-replacement. Not for nothing does Jacobs describe import-replacement as a ‘cataclysmic’ process – these changes often happen over a very short period and can bring about a rapid influx of people, ideas and capital. We see this in New York City, which grew from half a million residents in 1850 to over 3.4 million at the dawn of the twentieth century. Detroit went from having 250,000 residents in 1900 to a peak of 1.8 million by 1950. Delhi went from a population of 1.4 million in 1950 to almost 33 million in its larger metropolitan area today. That import-replacement is such a simple idea also makes it one of the most crucial to understand for policymakers. At the end of the day, a city can provide everything it wants in terms of amenities, sprawling parks, leisure centres and cultural venues, but without that fundamental process of import-replacement taking place, an urban agglomeration will not grow and will be confined to decline. To quote Jacobs: ‘artificial symptoms of prosperity or a “good image” do not revitalize a city, but only explicit economic growth processes for which there are no substitutes.’ (The Economy of Cities, Pg 200).

So much for that idea; it is clear that import-replacement must be at the heart of any policy for urban development. How can policymakers leverage this idea when it seemingly depends so much on individual decisions made by companies and entrepreneurs? The first thing to address is what are the barriers that prevent economic import-replacement? Are land-use patterns overly strict and restrictive to new and innovative types of industry? Central to the idea of import-replacement is the idea that new forms of businesses, processes and industries will arise that cannot be foreseen in advance. It is therefore crucial that land-use regulation permits new forms of industries to emerge.

The process that Jacobs describes transcends individual policymakers, instead relying on decisions by financial institutions, entrepreneurs, and thrifty individuals. This should not lead to hopelessness. I would argue (and Jacobs, through her expansive uses of historical examples) that enterprise and trade come very naturally to human beings if the conditions are right. Whilst this does not guarantee that any city can become an economic powerhouse, since important factors including geography, human capital, and chance also play an important role, almost every region contains a dominant urban agglomeration. By minimising barriers to trade and commerce in these areas, ensuring regulation, taxes and land-use is conducive to growth rather than acting as a resistor, cities can begin to tap into the power of import-replacement and grow their economies and those of the regions surrounding them.

Finally, where I diverge from the libertarian-purist perspective is that I argue urban policymakers can play an active role in cultivating growth. For example, by creating forums for entrepreneurs to come together and exchange ideas, encouraging universities to collaborate with businesses so that jobs are created within the city (see HEC Paris’ incubator), and making sure the basic needs of the city (sanitation, safety, etc) are met, cities can help to kick-start the process of import-replacement.

One policy that seldom works, however, is offering large subsidies to companies to locate in a city – often in the form of tax breaks or land grants. There is significant literature outlining how this greatly distorts the allocation of resources on a national (and international) scale. Yet the idea is nonetheless tempting to policymakers if they think it’ll bring regional benefits. The research on this does not suggest this is the case – as highlighted in a recent essay published by the Center for American Progress. Jacobs provides a clear reason for why this is the case in both The Economy of Cities and Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Put simply, big businesses which are ‘transplanted’ into smaller cities do not bring about import-replacement because they are already tightly vertically integrated. Smaller businesses, however, are more likely to tap into an existing or nascent eco-system of other businesses – in a city or elsewhere – to produce its goods. This greatly increases the likelihood of innovation and new techniques being adopted as competitors strive to improve quality and lower prices. Money spent on providing large subsidies can therefore be put to much more effective use if it is instead returned to businesses as a tax cut or channelled into the other factors that encourage import-replacement.

(2) Look at what your city does well

It is not the case that cities can purchase development by simply luring in companies, through tax breaks or other means, to set up transplants in their regions. ‘Development cannot be given, it has to be done. It is a process, not a collection of capital goods,’ notes Jane Jacobs on page 119 of Cities and the Wealth of Nations. For urban policymakers, the lesson that can be drawn from this is that the focus should be placed on the existing things a city or metropolitan area does well. It would be nonsensical for a city like Fort Wayne, Indiana, to spend billions of dollars trying to become the next Silicon Valley. Agglomeration effects matter and remain a central part of how import-replacement happens. For more effective, for small and medium-sized, is to focus on what they already do well and aim to cultivate those industries. This is less difficult than it seems for again, individuals and businesses have a remarkable ability to innovate and lead the import-replacement process themselves if the conditions are right. For urban policymakers, the focus should therefore be on identifying bottlenecks in cooperation. Are land prices prohibitive to the creation of new industries and could zoning reform unlock additional growth? Is the city the kind of place that would attract potential talent, or is crime, housing availability and educational provision undermining its ability to do so? Again, whilst actively picking and choosing winners and losers seldom works, there is an active role that policymakers can play in helping to cultivate growth in existing sectors that are performing well. Cities could partner with chambers of commerce to ensure that businessmen are connected, and ideas spread faster. Collaboration with banks and financial institutions could provide seed money for new businesses to emerge. By first focusing on the basics, then looking at the particular areas of success and finding ways to encourage them further, a city can help kick-start the growth-replacement process.

(3) Beware of over-specialisation

Import-replacement depends on specialisation. Both Jacobs and later, Edward Glaeser (in Triumph of the City) highlight the importance of urban agglomerations which increase the spread of ideas and allow firms to produce new goods and ideas without having to start from scratch. Chris Miller’s Chip Wars provides a vivid description of how this process played out in Silicon Valley, noting how specialisation allows each company to focus on adding value at one specific part of the supply chain, to the point where countless companies now focus solely on chip design, others, like GlobalFoundries focus on manufacturing, yet others on marketing, transportation, the production of equipment. It is far easier to start a company in an environment where not every aspect of the supply chain needs to be replicated and companies instead tap into an existing eco-system. The odds of innovation grow significantly, as a result of lower barriers of entry.

Except over-specialisation is at cross-purposes with the long-term success of a city, if it means that it cannot recover or surmount shocks in global supply and demand. Take the classic example of Detroit, which specialised very heavily in automobile production over the first half of the twentieth century, this growth almost entirely led by private enterprise. When automation and increased foreign competition led to a decline in the Motor City’s primary industry, workers had few alternatives. Many just left, leading to a precipitous population decline from 1.8 million to just over 640,000 today.

I will again stress that a lot of the economic dynamics occurring within a city are not things that policymakers can directly control. Subsidies might work in the short term, but as noted above, their success is very limited in the long run and the money might instead have been returned to residents in the form of a tax cut. Furthermore, no single policy prescription will work for all cities, since each faces a unique set of problems and challenges and mayors must look closely at the problems confronting their particular city.

There are nevertheless some takeaways from Jacobs’ works that might apply here and that mayors and other urban leaders could take to their cities. First is that space and layout matter. Jacobs presents a view of cities that very heavily emphasises the importance of walkability and access. I would push back a little and say that perfect walkability is not always necessary. Yet enterprises and households should be in relative proximity to each other to foster greater exchange of ideas and collaboration. A fifteen-minute drive on the highway might not make a difference. A fifty-minute drive in chock-a-block traffic would. The other ingredients to fostering urban diversity (still allowing for specialisation but in various sectors) include mixed uses of land, sufficient density to provide businesses with customers, older buildings to allow for experimentation (new or experimental businesses often can’t afford new units where costs are very high), and smaller blocks to allow for more street frontage.

Jacobs’ analysis of the factors cultivating urban economic diversity is sound, but it requires further expansion if it is to apply to traditional industry and the new creative industries. In addition to these factors, cities and states should also ensure their processes allow for flexibility and collaboration with regard to permitting and other legislation; they should ensure their processes are clear and transparent, and they should keep costs at a minimum.

Simply wishing for prosperity won’t make it so. The reality is that urban success depends on governance, ideas, and some degree of luck. But another remarkable fact emerges from the literature of Jacobs’ and others I have buried myself in over the last few weeks: human beings have an incredible ability to collaborate and innovate if left to do so. It’s a hopeful takeaway, for it means that success doesn’t depend on policymakers’ abilities to play economic planners and run a city. Focus on the basics, eliminate barriers to growth, advocate for your city, and you may well turn the odds slightly in its favour.

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A natural zoning experiment in Denver: These two homes straddle a 2010 zoning boundary change. The result: The house in duplex zoning converted into two homes, and the other converted into a McMansion that cost 80% more.

Arthur Gailes, AEI

This is from AEI’s housing supply case study of Denver, by Tobias Peter and Hanlu Zhang.

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Read the full report or the executive summary.

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DCP divided the city into “neighborhood tabulation areas” (NTAs) with population ranging from 15,000 to 100,000. DCP’s data showed that the city as a whole lost 2 percent of its under-18 population between 2010 and 2020, but that some areas had significant gains.

The biggest gainers were Long Island City (over 200 percent) and four areas where the under-18 population increased by between 50 and 75 percent (the Financial District, Midtown, Midtown South, and Downtown Brooklyn).

There seems to be a positive correlation between child growth and housing supply growth, even in these expensive areas. In the Long Island City NTA, the number of housing units increased by over 100 percent between 2010 and 2020- so it is no surprise that the number of children increased. Housing supply increased significantly in three of the four NTAs that added the most children. The number of number of occupied housing units increased by 23 percent in the Midtown South NTA, by 26 percent in the Financial District NTA, and by 86 percent in the Downtown Brooklyn NTA. (Central Midtown was an exception to the rule; housing supply increased more slowly there). By contrast, in Manhattan as a whole, the number of housing units increased by only 7 percent, and the number of children actually declined.

Moreover, affluent areas that added very little housing supply tended to gain under-18 residents at a much slower pace. For example, in the three Upper East Side (NTAs) (Lenox Hill, Carnegie Hill, Yorkville) the number of housing units increased by only 1.9 percent and the number of under-18 residents by only 8.9 percent. In two Upper West Side areas (the Central Upper West Side and Lincoln Square) the number of occupied units increased by only 1.4 percent and the number of under-18 residents by only 12.2 percent. In the West Village, the number of housing units actually decreased, and the number of under-18 residents increased by 6.9 percent.

The general pattern among these elite neighborhoods seems to be: where lots of housing is built, lots of children move in. Where very little housing is built, the child population still sometimes increases, but not by as much.

(NOTE: More data is available at popfactfinder.planning.nyc.gov )

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Cities have always invited us to be constantly on the move. We move around to get to work, go shopping, meet friends, attend a concert, visit an art exhibition, and take advantage of all the many activities that a metropolis offers.

This post appeared originally in Caos Planejado and is reprinted here with the publisher’s permission.

Cities have always invited us to be constantly on the move. We move around to get to work, go shopping, meet friends, attend a concert, visit an art exhibition, and take advantage of all the many activities that a metropolis offers.

However, since the pandemic, technology has made it possible to live a whole life in the city without leaving our homes. Many people can work full-time remotely, connecting online to attend meetings and get information. They can have their food delivered to their home, meet friends online, and have their preferred entertainment streamed to a device while sitting on their couch. They can exercise on a stationary bike, guided by a coach on their screen.

This online life can be wholly planned, and, like anything fully programmed in advance, it soon becomes tedious and inefficient, similar at the personal level to the Gosplan, or State Planning Committee, that guided the planned economy of the Soviet Union. The pleasing randomness, long provided by active city life, is missing.

Randomness makes city life exciting and productive, and how we design cities can multiply or reduce the chances of serendipitous encounters of people and ideas. Creativity and innovation, two of the most desirable traits of metropolitan environments, depend on unplanned meetings between people of different skills, tastes, and backgrounds.

In cities, most trips, even if they involve a car, bus, or subway, start and end with walking. As we move through a city at a walking pace, we collect unexpected visual information about the areas we cross. Simply traversing the pavement exposes a pedestrian to unexpected, diverse inputs. Jane Jacobs described this process in her 1961 classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, writing, “The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.”

Let’s look at how urban designers can increase the acquisition of random information by multiplying chance encounters.

Cities are divided between two fundamentally different areas: streets and private lots. Planners and engineers design streets, while households and firms design what is built on private lots. Planners, through land use regulations, often severely constrain the design of private lots.

Private commercial establishments where people usually meet, like cafés, bars, restaurants, cinemas, theaters, clubs, and churches, are essential to the creativity of cities. The openness of commercial establishments toward the street is the best way to transmit information on what they have to offer. This is why cafés and restaurants with outdoor seating are so attractive. Municipalities should allow cafés and restaurants to expand into the public space when the width of the sidewalk permits it.

Active frontages—streets lined with colorful entrances, windows, cafés, and shops—give people reasons to stop and engage, leading to more chance encounters. Conversely, blank walls or inactive street frontages (often found around large, single-use buildings like parking garages or warehouses) can discourage pedestrian activity and social interaction.

City dwellers usually love walking through an open-air market, because the display of goods for sale maximizes the amount of random information they encounter. Food markets’ variety of colors and fragrances provides visitors with unfamiliar, stimulating sensations. Establishments that cannot be open on the streets, like concert halls, theaters, and department stores, can still provide information to pedestrians through posters and elaborately designed shop windows.

Urban planners can follow a few rules to increase the richness of information collected by pedestrians.

1. Do not segregate commercial or cultural use from residential use through zoning regulations. Do not restrict commercial establishments to a single use. For instance, a gym or a bookstore should be allowed to open a bar or a restaurant on its premises, because a city benefits by maximizing chance encounters.
2. Do not oblige businesses to have parking lots between the sidewalk and the building. Walking along a parking lot impoverishes the information collected. While private, off-street parking is often indispensable, the parking should be underground or in the back of the building, not in front.
3. Do not impose setbacks in residential streets on the ground floor. The setbacks often need to be protected by monotonous fences.

The Corbusier-inspired “towers in the park,” the high-rise, single-use slabs surrounded by green space, are the ultimate urban design sin. This layout sanitizes streets from random information, because sidewalks are too distant from buildings to provide information to pedestrians. Randomness enriches urban life and ought to be fostered at every opportunity.

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Sites and services projects are government-sponsored packages of shelter related services, which range from a minimal level of “surveyed plot” to an intermediate level of “serviced sites” to an upper level of “core housing” complete with utilities and access to community-based services. The level of services depends on the ability and willingness of beneficiary populations to afford them. Typically, such projects represent a sharp break with preexisting government shelter policies in that they attempt, in principle, to focus directly on lower-income deliver shelter and services with small or no subsidies.

Mayo and Gross, World Bank Economic Review, 1987

A 2021 paper by Guy Michaels and colleagues found that S&S has been effective in the long run in Tanzania.

Mumbai retrospective

For my own look back, I revisited a 1983-84 S&S site in Mumbai, called Charkop Kandivali in 2010. I had been part of the appraisal team on the World Bank side. Mumbai planner VK Phatak (whose book I’m keenly awaiting) was also part of the appraisal team on the regional development authority side. VK personally supervised the implementation of the project.

The key elements of the S&S design I participated in is that there are different prices of lots with different standards. Not all World Bank
S&S projects applied this pricing method based on different infrastructure standards within the same site.

The pricing method and the design are based on this document that I wrote with Marie-Agnes and James Wright. It was published in 1988 (WB publications need a lot of reviews and clearance before being approved).

Why not imitated?

Money could be made with S&S. Why was it not reproduced at a large scale by the private sector? The answer is that the Housing Board would not allow the private sector to use these standards. The private sector was obliged to use minimum standards that were a multiple of those used in S&S.

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