[anandr2013]

I have often thought that for a lot of the countries in Africa (where land is in abundance, for example a place like the DRC), creating mini Singapores/Dubais/Monacos could be a viable, if ecologically disastrous, way of economic development. The potential revenue would far exceed the necessary infrastructure costs with land being free. The only thing they would have to guard against is political instability.

[notahacker]

Economist Paul Romer has some interesting, if provocative thoughts on that idea, chiefly the idea of developing countries choosing to outsource the administration of a parcel of their territory to institutions designed and backed by more economically developed foreign powers. http://urbanizationproject.org/blog/charter-cities

[gkanai]

Romer was covered by Planet Money a while ago: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/11/09/164813887/episo...

[SilasX]

Not that it's a bad idea, but it does sound a bit like colonization :-p

[anandr2013]

Hahahaa. As someone who has spent a couple of years of years in the DRCongo, and comes from a colonised country (India), I am not sure how to slot this (good,bad, bit of both). I think it's probably short/medium term good , but long term bad. The ecological consequences alone suggest that it's long term bad. The only problem is that having spent a lot of time there and now knowing a lot of people from the country, I am biased towards short term good.