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Leaving aside the DMZ/NK Risk... Cities work. Bigger cities work better than smaller cities. They're cheaper, cleaner, greener, more productive, with better
by LatteLazy 4y ago
Leaving aside the DMZ/NK Risk... Cities work. Bigger cities work better than smaller cities. They're cheaper, cleaner, greener, more productive, with better health and social outcomes and more access to education etc etc etc.
That's why basically any large project basically NEED to be within X minutes of a major city. The saving in land cost setting it up in a rural area is nothing compared to having no staff, no services, no infrastructure, local political problems etc.
- AdamN 4y agoFor fabs it seems like just a bit outside of a city is the optimum location. Chandler (Phoenix) for Intel's new fab and outside of Portland for the other US ones. I expect it's similar in Taiwan and South Korea. Side note but isn't water a critical input for a fab? Arizona's water problems are going to continue to get worse so this seems like a bad move by Intel.
- LatteLazy 4y agoYeah, it makes sense to put it not in the centre but within (say) 1h of the centre. Then you can recruit from an 8 figure workforce including multiple universities, offer a huge list of places to live and amenities to workers, meet reliability with everyone from regulators to ambassadors to investors to lawyers, have gold standard infrastructure, etc. I'm never sure when it comes to water. I think a lot of places in the west chose to have shortages by refusing to build infrastructure and wasting supply on subsidizing things like (export orientated, unnecessarily high water use forms of) agriculture. But I am no expert...
- bobthepanda 4y agoThere is more than one city in South Korea. Over half of South Koreans live in the Seoul Capital Area. That’s a much higher proportion than countries other people often accuse of being overcentralized and neglecting the regions, like the UK with London or France with Paris. And to some degree what you describe is a self fulfilling prophecy; big cities hollowing out the smaller ones, shrinking their economies and leaving their governments in deficit and the services worse, rinse and repeat.
- LatteLazy 4y agoIt's not a value judgement, it's just life. Villages should shrink to feed towns which should shrink to feed cities which should shrink to feed the largest regional conurbation. Trying to force the flow backwards like the UK does just makes everyone poorer and leads to worse outcomes in social terms. Bigger cities are just more efficient and effective.
- bilekas 4y agoReally not sure why this is being downvoted so much. I will say that you might have the cart before the horse, cities are a product of the efficiencies / benefits.
- bobthepanda 4y agoThere isn’t any good reason why the outlying regions of the UK should have lower GDP per capita than Eastern Europe. Seoul is extremely large, at 26M. Reversing even some of the flow would largely still be aiming at million plus cities in South Korea, of which there are five outside the Seoul Capital Area.
- LatteLazy 4y agoHow does moving people from high productivity jobs in high productivity regions to low/low ones help anyone? That's the question here. There is no reason one area should have a higher or lower GDP (GDR) than any other. And if they do, that is not a moral judgement on that region. It's just a fact. People seem to want to reduce everything to the lowest level to make it "fair", but regions are not people, regions should NOT be treated fairly. People should be treated fairly. Regions (and countries) are just made up...
- bobthepanda 4y agoWho says it’s high/high and low/low rather than high/high and high/low? Making people move, to a place that already has well documented housing and transportation shortages, is not really fair. Unequal GDP per capita is not fair either, particularly since that means less ability to pay for services, which are generally lower quality and much further away from homes.