[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.