Triumph of the city – a tribute to the best invention of humanity!

So the doomsayers are forever at it complaining that the world is overpopulated. These are the folks who see the cup as half-full. To them a small population is a godsend and they argue that we ought to keep the human population small to overcome social problems. As I have argued in a previous blogposting, smaller populations do not provide much of an advantage and may in fact be a hindrance to economic development. Of course this is a generalisation and I know full well that there are exceptions to this rule (think of poor countries in Asia such as Pakistan and Bangladesh - which all have fairly big populations). But the undeniable fact is that fairly sizable populations (and a hundred million seems a fair bet according to The Economist) seem to augur well for economic development opportunities. 

Some of the leading economies in the world today have relatively big populations. As already acknowledged, there are exceptions to this rule, but the argument of a positive correlation between a big population and a much higher GDP makes sense. One need only look at the economies of mighty China (1.3 billion; 2^nd biggest economy by GDP), Brazil (200 billion – 7^th biggest), India (over a billion; 10t^h biggest), Japan (3^rd biggest economy; over a hundred million people), Germany (80 million; 4^th biggest GDP), and the US (300 million; number 1 GDP).

The inexorable march to the city

Sometime in 2013, Planet Earth reached a milestone when many more people supposedly lived in cities compared to those in rural areas. Personally I celebrated that achievement. Now let me state outrightly that I do hold an idyllic and romanticised view of rural areas. After all, I've spent the better part of my life in a village and still spend my holidays there. But rural areas are a nightmare from a number of areas: it is virtually impossible and very costly to deliver bulk services to rural areas. The government - with good intentions of course – does intend to provide energy and a whole suite of bulk services to rural areas (they call it service delivery). But because rural areas are spread out, it’s a heck of a challenge to cost-effectively deliver suitable services. And people in rural areas in South Africa are not used to paying for services. So even a well-meaning municipality quickly finds that rural areas are a drain on its revenue collection system. Not that there are no options to change this, but it requires a heck of an effort and would probably take a much longer time for the culture of non-payment for services to be eradicated. After all, we readily pay for and accept use of prepaid phones. Why can’t the same logic apply to paying for services?

It is a well-known fact that the national electricity provider in South Africa (Eskom) is struggling with collections of payments for electricity in places such as Soweto. But that’s a story for another day. I see this whole debacle as an opportunity for innovative leadership where incentives could be created to encourage payment for services used. It has not escaped my attention that the good people of Gauteng are quietly buying e-tags and registering their e-toll accounts even though there has been fierce opposition to tolling Gauteng roads. Things definitely do improve with time. It’s the way the world works I guess.

The inevitable triumph of the city

In a book called Triumph of the City, the urban economist Edward Glaeser puts forward telling arguments about the advantages of city living. It turns out that we owe pretty much everything we’ve come to enjoy today thanks to the generation of smart ideas made possible by the city. The story goes like this: cities bring skilled people together. This is as a result of the availability of suitable services, reduced commute times, the concentration of skilled people, and the general availability of free and open markets that facilitate the spread of innovative ideas and wealth. The types of amenities that make city living desirable are the very things that promote wealth creation. Cities make it possible for people to get together, have fun and be creative, while building the economy. So you get the picture I guess.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell sets out to decipher genius and argues that geniuses are able to succeed and thrive largely because of the supportive environments and circumstances under which they were born or lived. No one ever makes it alone. Call it the luck of the draw - being born in the right place at the right time. These are essentially attributes that cities provide – one has a better shot at success in a city than in a village. For geniuses like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, it made sense that they were exposed to computers from a young age and grew up using them. There are numerous examples of geniuses who succeeded in other fields, but the common thread in all of them is the supportive environment and the benefit of being in the right area at the right time. Living in a city provides that immense advantage.

There are numerous examples of ways in which cities have contributed a great deal to the lifestyles and habits that define modern life today. The concentration of skilled people and suitable amenities allows for a favourable environment for the generation of innovative ideas. Silicon Valley is a case in point as far as the computer technology boom is concerned. Johannesburg owes its existence to the mining of gold and the attraction of industries linked to mining. London is the financial hub of the world due to the concentration of skilled financiers and bankers. Paris has forever been the fashion capital of the world and will hold that distinction for years to come. The point is not so much that these things could not have been done elsewhere, but simply that the city environment made it a lot easier for the clever ideas to be replicated. Cities, by their nature, tend to foster the spread of innovative ideas.

The demise of poor villages

Even in the relatively less-developed South African setup, villages are definitely on their way out. Soon most of them will become the equivalent of ghost towns. Even mighty China has come to accept the inevitability of urbanisation. The thing is, villages are expensive to maintain and they generate very little wealth. As opposed to having departments that encourage rural development and economic stimulation of rural areas, it would make sense to accept the reality of urbanisation and do everything we can to promote such a trend. This would make it easy for society to tackle many of the social problems that confront us.

The cities I’m talking about here are not the typical townships and suburbs in South Africa. The townships are an apartheid relic and are a nightmare for development planners. We should be advocating a rethink of our settlement patterns to encourage densification and concentration. Sadly, the proliferation of so-called ‘RDP houses' in South Africa is definitely a step in the wrong direction and a missed opportunity to build sustainable settlements. The best type of urbanisation would best be achieved through insisting on high-rise buildings (skyscrapers) and flats. Suburbs are also a no-no. From a resource efficiency point of view, suburbs present their own unique challenges such as increased traffic congestions and inefficient use of energy. I know most of us hold the cherished aspiration of building houses in less-scattered settlements and leafy suburbs. But we must be open to the reality that our fancy suburbs are not the best deal for the environment.

The most efficient (and most productive) cities in the world are those characterised by high-rise buildings and densification. Cities, by their nature, do promote the densification of skilled people who tend to become the bedrock of a country’s economy. Even in its seemingly run-down state, Johannesburg is still the heartbeat of the South African economy. Cities like London, Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco, and New York stand as prime examples of the benefits of densification and the generation of smart ideas. And because of the concentration of skilled people - who in turn generate smart ideas - cities hold the last hope of guiding Planet Earth to a more sustainable future.

So the undeniable fact is that villages are not sustainable. One can build shopping centres and all types of crafty developments in them, but these things would probably be ideally located in cities. In any case, villages compete with cities for skilled people and in the long run are going to lose out.

So there you have it folks. Cities are our greatest invention and they make us smarter, richer, greener, healthier and happier. And these are pretty much the very qualities we need to guarantee a sustainable future for our civilisation, wouldn't you say?

MOOCs to the rescue in solving South Africa's educational woes!

There is a silent revolution brewing in the educational sphere. The typical classroom setup hasn’t changed much from the beginning of time. It’s still primarily a case of the teacher passing instructions to eager (or bored) learners, and then giving them homework and exercises to complete afterwards. The poor pupils are graded on the basis of how well they perform in such tests. Not much room for fun there I’m afraid. The average pupil gets bored with these tedious tasks. The situation is even worse in poor countries where classes tend to be overcrowded and there’s very little direct communication or interaction between teachers and pupils. Certainly it was like that in the schools I attended. No wonder there are very few geniuses from Manyeleti!

Making education fun

Education doesn’t have have to be this tedious. You see, the world has moved on with new technologies and fun ways to do things. Most of these are open to the relatively better-off of course.  Kids own iPads and tablet computers these days. That makes the whole learning process fun and interactive. There’s a rich repertoire of tools that kids with access to the internet can use to make learning fun and relevant. Struggling with libraries? You can read free stuff on the internet. Virtually everything is available for free. Look up anything you are not sure of and get a world of information on your fingertips. I vividly remember those days when I would wander around a library only to find that the book I was looking for had been checked out. It meant waiting for the book to be returned. Very frustrating process if ever there was one. But kids of these days are not (and should not be) faced with such a challenge.

Short of libraries? You can just download free videos on YouTube of the exact thing you are interested in. The only limitation currently is the exorbitant charges that the internet providers in SA levy for access to broadband. But that is bound to change soon. That’s pretty much where our politicians should be channelling their energies unapologetically. The future is gonna be a very bright place. In no time cities will have free wireless access all around. I‘m not sure who’s going to be first out the door with this in SA (Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Joburg, Tshwane – any takers?), but that day of free broadband internet access is just around the corner.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) – a pot full of gold!

SA is struggling with severe skills shortages and poor education standards. As opposed to closing ourselves off in a corner hoping we will improve things by ourselves, I think the internet provides a brilliant opportunity for us to catch up with the rest of the world. World-class institutions such as MIT (ocw.mit.edu/‎) have for years been running free open online courses that anyone in the world can access. If that is not the free education that our dim-witted politicians consistently make noise about, I don’t know what is.

There is an opportunity for poorly-equipped schools and universities to align their curriculums and educational content with the free stuff offered by the likes of MIT. Gosh, they even offer course material, lecture notes, videos, assignments, and all the rest. Just what more could one wish for?  It takes sheer laziness for teachers not to be aware of or take advantage of these open platforms.

Next time you hear someone complaining bitterly about the poor education standards in SA, point them to these high quality open education platforms. If I were anywhere in the department of education (or in government for that matter) I would insist that every educational institution in the country has access to free wireless internet or broadband so they could tap into the wealth of material available in cyberspace. The internet provides a glorious opportunity for poor people to catch up with the rest of the world on the knowledge front. If we let this opportunity slip, “the fault will not be with the stars but with ourselves that we will remain underlings”.

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[1] Massive Open Online Courses

Aid for a much better planet

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees basic human rights and a good life for all. Even though not legally binding, the declaration has been adopted by and  has influenced the constitutions of most countries. The Declaration has served as the foundation for most laws, treaties and institutions protecting and promoting human rights. The South African Constitution grants basic human rights to all. Apart from the right to political and religious freedoms, everyone has the right to good nutrition, access to health, and the right to live in a clean, healthy environment that does not compromise the status of their health.

Which is all very good and well. Except this is one of those areas where we are clearly not succeeding. Even though we guarantee access to good health and nutrition, this is hardly the case in real life. Achieving this would make a tremendous difference to the vast majority of citizens of Mother Earth. The point here is that if we can’t give all kids a decent start in life, there is no guessing what's gonna happen to them down the road. Most often, such unfortunate kids end up on the welfare queue. Or much worse, they end up crowding our jails. So it really would be in the best interest of everyone if we spent a little bit now to help the downtrodden, as opposed to spending vast sums of money later on to fix a broken system (i.e. in the form of kids in jail, broken lives, etc.). It all makes perfect sense to me.

Giving the poor a leg-up

I'm no big fan of aid of course. Aid probably exacerbates poverty and keeps beneficiaries reliant on it forever. That’s simple logic. But is that all there is to it?

It turns out reality is a different kettle of fish. Without aid, there is little hope for others. If aid is geared to give the poor a leg-up, or help them gain a foothold on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, then aid is good. Every child deserves a good start in life. It makes even more sense if such people have been victims of a systematic system of oppression that deprived them of the most basic requirements of modern life. This would be the case in many poor African countries. So on second thoughts, aid may not be such a terrible thing after all.

But how much aid would be fair for a start?

Ours is an odd world. There's unbelievable wealth on the one side, juxtaposed with extreme poverty on the other. People struggle with lifestyle diseases such as obesity, while a third of the world’s population are desperately poor and struggle to make ends meet. It seems more a case of distorted distribution of wealth and resources. A big chunk of food is thrown away as waste on the one side, which would surely provide much-needed relief to others. Blame our political systems for this, or blame our belief systems. They're all letting us down in this regard.

So it turns out that the rich world is foremost when it comes to donating money to aid. They set themselves targets such as putting aside about 0.7% of their GDP for aid. This may be a paltry sum if you come to think of it, but one must accept that they give the money out of their own goodwill. But if one considers that percentage against the subsidies pumped into their agriculture - which distorts the market and makes it virtually impossible for companies or farmers from Developing Countries to compete with them on an equal footing - the amount set aside for aid is very minuscule indeed. Back in 2002, the amount pumped into agricultural subsidies in the West was well over $360 billion, while roughly $50 billion was spent on aid. And disappointingly, the percentage set aside for aid has been declining ever since.

An innovative idea to boosting aid

According to Michael Metcalfe, the central banks of Japan, the US, and the UK pumped $3.7 trillion to prop up their economies during the recent financial crisis through what they euphemistically called Quantitative Easing. QE is essentially money that’s artificially created, with no underlying value or assets to support it. The Central Banks went about buying assets (mostly government bonds or treasuries as they are referred to in the US) to stimulate activity in their markets. One can argue that QE has worked to save their economies (and by extension that of the world in general) from oblivion. The biggest concern with QE was the attendant inflation that would supposedly accompany the artificial money created. But this never came to be. Or so the consensus goes.

The argument then is, why can't the amount dedicated to aid be created in the same manner as that in QE to boost aid? If such a vast amount of money ($3.7 trillion) could be pumped into economies to prop them up, why can't the same logic apply to money for aid? In any case, aid is a more pressing priority than say bailing out reckless bankers. We’re talking about the livelihoods of a vast majority of people here. By whichever metric you use, the advantages of creating money for aid would far outweigh those of bailing out irresponsible banks and struggling corporates (who got themselves in the mess through not exercising proper caution in their business dealings in the first place). Aid would improve people’s lives and make our planet a much fairer place.

Call for a moral code

As you can gather, this calls for a moral code and a humane spirit. The task is not unattainable. It is perfectly within our means. As opposed to consistently making pledges which they fail to fulfill, rich countries could implement a version of QE focusing on aid in a bid to improve the livelihoods of the helpless on the planet. This would have a touch of genius and make such an unbelievable difference in the lives of the poor. Those who benefit from aid would be given a leg-up. They would gain a foothold on the bottom rung of the ladder (with all credit to Jeffery Sacchs who coined that phrase) and over time become self-sufficient. Understandably this would take time. But there's no denying the vast benefits this would have for the world economy. So the choice is in doing the right thing, or ignoring the plight of a large section of human society. And if we accept that most of those poor people found themselves in the helpless situations they are in through no fault of their own (but through our rampant greed and opportunism), saving them is a no-brainier.

What do you think? Does aid makes sense to you?