topics: |  world | econ | reference | urban

The day will come when you France, you Russia, you Germany, all you nations
of the continent, without losing your distinct qualities and your glorious
  individuality, you will merge into a superior unit, and you will constitute
  [an] European fraternity.
—Victor Hugo, 1849 International Peace Congress; was laughed at. p. 147

World War and its aftermath

WW2: cost Germany and Italy four or more decades of growth and put Austrian
and French gross domestic products (GDPs) back to levels of the nineteenth
century.

Overcoming division and its dramatic consequences was the objective of
European leaders after World War II. Destructive nationalism — and its economic
dimension, protectionism— were indeed partly blamed for the
disaster. Economic integration was thus viewed as the best way to avoid
another war. That it should come through peaceful means and with the main
objective of maintaining peace was — and remains — a unique endeavor. In this
respect, European integration is a clear success. But it was not clear in the
1940s and 1950s that this vision of "Peace through Integration" would
succeed, particularly because it came at the same time as the Cold War's
division between the East and the West.

    Marshall Plan: its mandate was to reduce trade barriers, particularly
quota restrictions. Europe in the early postwar years was a tariffand
quota-ridden economy. Removing trade barriers fostered the rapid growth of
trade. Between 1950 and 1958, manufacturing exports grew by almost 20 percent
a year in West Germany, 9.2 percent in Italy, and 3.8 percent in France.
... avg annual GDP growth was 7.8 percent in West Germany, 5 percent in Italy,
and 4.4 percent in France. p.147
[Map G2.1 - current European union - is very interesting in how it leaves a
hole where Yugoslavia is - Hungary and Greece, further east, are
included. Also, Norway Switzld - not in Union.  ]

Chapter 1: DENSITY

    Mostly off the world's radar, on a dusty plain in West Africa, is a city
of 1.6 million people.  Bisected by the River Niger, its two halves— with
about 800,000 people each — are linked by only two bridges. The pressure of
movement is so strong that every morning one of these bridges is dedicated to
incoming traffic: minibuses, bicycles, motorbikes, pedestrians, and
occasionally private cars. In the evenings, to leave the center means joining
an exodus of people toward the minibus depots. Green vans loaded with
passengers file out to residential neighborhoods as far as 20 kilometers
away. This is Bamako, Mali.  It contracts into its center every morning and
breathes out again in the evening.

    With each breath Bamako grows bigger.  It happens to be one of the
fastest-growing cities in the world. Natural demographic growth is
supplemented by migration from the countryside and other Malian cities. Its
population in 2008 is 50 percent larger than 10 years ago, making it the same
size as Budapest, Dubai, or Warsaw. It has 10 times more inhabitants than the
next biggest Malian city and accommodates 70 percent of the country's
industrial establishments.1 New neighborhoods — quartiers — formerly villages,
become consolidated with the rest of the city, toward the south, east, and
west.

    Despite its industriousness, Bamako is one of the sleepier cities in West
Africa.  Many of the manufactured staples come 1,184 kilometers by road from
one of the region's metropolises, Abidjan, which has more than twice Bamako's
population.

    Abidjan seems small beside Lagos, where activity is so concentrated that
its residents speak of living in a pressure-cooker. Some families rent rooms
to sleep for six hours and then turn them over to another family that takes
their place. Shopping does not necessarily require travel: goods are brought
on foot and cart to drivers stuck in Lagos's interminable traffic jams. To
some, like the authors of Lagos's 1980 master plan written when the city had
just 2.5 million residents, the continuing growth of the city is
"undisciplined."2 What can possibly be so attractive about living in Lagos
that, despite its congestion and crime, it continues to draw migrants?

Economic Density: Urban masses

    The short answer: economic density.  Lagos is not the most economically
dense city in the world, nor even the most densely populated. Those
distinctions belong to Central London and Mumbai, respectively.
Even so, Nigeria's economic future and Lagos's growth are as inextricably
tied as Britain's economy is with London's growth. No country has developed
without the growth of its cities. As countries become richer, economic
activity becomes more densely packed into towns, cities, and metropolises.

    Jane Jacobs, the noted urbanist, did not have Bamako and Lagos in mind
when she wrote, "A metropolitan economy, if it's working well, is constantly
transforming many poor people into middle-class people, many illiterates into
skilled people, many greenhorns into competent citizens. Cities don't lure
the middle class. They create it."3 She might as well have written: as Lagos
and Bamako grow, they will fill in West Africa's missing middle.

Map 1.1 The landscape of economic mass is bumpy, even in a small country like
Belgium

The rank-size rule, discovered in 1913, can be expressed as the rank r
   associated with a city of size S is proportional to S to some negative
   power. The special case in which the estimated power equals –1 is known as
   Zipf's law, named after a linguist, George Zipf

Korea: study on Urban-rural divide - GDP: p. 101
   Seoul is at the pinnacle of the hierarchy.  Located 50 kilometers from the
   Republic of Korea's border with the Democratic Republic of Korea in the
   Han River basin, it is the country's capital and home to a quarter of its
   population (that is, 9.76 million people).
   At the bottom of the hierarchy, Jeongeup and Sunchang, both in the Jeonbuk
   province, are close to the interface between rural and urban. So while
   Jeongeup has a relatively large population (129,050), one in four of its
   inhabitants is a farmer.

Chapter 2: DISTANCE

map 2.2: travel time in hours to cities of > 50k, by subnational
administrative area; darker areas = longer travel time. India, E. China,
Europe, E. USA, all < 2 hours.  E. China, Siberia, N. Africa, N. Canada -
high. 101

Economic distance is not the same as Euclidean distance.
map 2.1: Based on straight-line distance, most of India is well connected to
   markets in dense settlements.  But people in many parts of India have
   difficulty getting to markets because of the travel time, determined by
   the type and quality of roads and other transport infrastructure. p.100

Chapter 3: DIVISION

Map 3.2 Some borders are much thicker than others - and the regions with
thick borders - Africa, S. Asia, C. Asia etc - are also among the poorest
nations.  p.98

We can change history but not geography. We can change our friends but not
our neighbors. - Atal Behari Vajpayee, 1999
   [argues that in a technological world, countries can change their nbrhoods
   - post WW2, Japan and the USA became close neighbours by forging extensive
   transpor linkages p. 121]

The economic benefits from more migration could be great.20 The pool of
potential migrants is likely to remain large given prevailing wage
differentials between poor and rich countries, three to four times those
triggering the mass migration of Europeans to North America in the
late-nineteenth century. p. 125

Capital restrictions - highest in Central / West Africa; next is S. Asia,
S. and N. Africa; C. Asia, Caucasus, Turkey;  and lowest in S. America and
OECD nations; Tariffs are also highest in these nations p. 124 fig3.3/127

Language diversity: highest near equator - > 200 lgs per 1million km² -
whereas around 45N it is about 20, and 45S it is about 5. - p. 129.
Also - striking graphic of language diversity in Africa Map 2.4, p. 129

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