Order Without Design

This book is based on a series of papers originally presented at the 2004 and 2005 meetings of the Auroville Urban Economics Workshop. The central argument is that economics provides an invaluable tool to understand, designing, and manage cities. From basic models--city sizes, prices, land, and resource values--to models of the city economy as an assembly of markets, markets as institutions that regulate behavior and incentivize economic activity; finally to models that explore how policies can have an immediate impact on the ground--street's widths, the size of land parcels, heights and shapes of buildings. There is an urgent need for this kind of urban economic understanding in all cities: it helps them to develop objectives and assess whether they are being achieved in practice; helps cities to design policies, priorities, and strategies; helps citizens to see how their choices affect the future of their city. The evidence from a growing number of emerging market economies (Mexico City's City Values by The Economist's model, New Delhi's urban revolution by Amartya Sen's model) indicates that this approach works. And who does not want to build cities as livable places?