
The City States of Europe - ingve
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/the-city-states-of-europe
======
lispm
I don't think the Megacity is a good model and here in Germany we certainly
don't "lack it". It's nothing we desire. Germany is currently happy NOT to
have cities like London, Paris, Tokyo, New York or similar.

What's the future for those Chinese Megacities? I'm not sure we see a
linear/whatever development of them over the next decades. Already huge cities
like Beijing or Delhi (India) are having huge problems (waste, energy, water,
air quality, and all kinds of pollution, transport, ...) which easily could
lead to very nasty scenarios.

The medium sized large cities (1-3 million people) usually offer better
quality of life, especially if there is enough space around them.

If we look at Germany, there are competing concepts like the "Metropolitan
Region" (the region with a big city or a city landscape as its center) and the
"Region" (sometimes the Bundesland/State, sometimes a bit smaller). The region
is defined by cultural/political/economic aspects - it could lack a big city,
but have a cultural identity, which provides the bonding. The large cities
were growing, not because of foreign migrants, but because they provided the
better infrastructure and cultural life + the young east germans were looking
for work after the fall of the 'Wall'.

At the same time in western Germany quite a bit of the economy has been driven
by medium sized companies sometimes in remote/rural areas in small towns. Some
of them are no longer medium sized, but kept the spirit of one. They show that
it is possible to deliver high-tech to a global customer-base from small
cities. Just take 'Herzogenaurach' in southern Germany, a small town with just
over 20k people. It hosts three large companies: Adidas (> 10bn Euro revenue),
Puma (3bn Euro revenue) and Schaeffler (>10bn Euro revenue).

~~~
mafribe

        huge cities like Beijing [...] are having huge problems
    

I don't think these problems are city problems. The problem is a consequence
of the numbers of people. For example the waste n people produce is more or
less constant (relative to a given level of development) regardless of whether
these n people live in a dense city space, or are spread out.

Indeed, densely populated cities are probably better placed to deal with
transport energy and so on, because economies of scale work in favour of dense
cities. A particularly good example of this is public transport. Only dense
cities can be walkable, and only dense cities can support efficient, well
utilised public transport networks.

~~~
morsch
Density alone is not an argument for mega-cities, though. While it's possible
that the economies of scale keep increasing with size -- ie. maybe the
electrical network of a dense city of 5 million people is more efficient than
that of a dense city of 100k people -- there is probably a point somewhere
between those two points where the gains are only marginal.

A dense city of a 100k can support an excellent bus network, a dense city of
250k can additionaly support an excellent networks of trams or subways. 500k
gets you direct access to high speed rail and beyond that I'm not sure what
additional millions get you in terms of public transport -- an airport, I
guess.

And a dense city of 100k people is more walkable than a dense city of
millions: In the former case, you can pretty much reach the whole city area by
walking (if you are a healthy adult). In the latter, you can only walk in your
general neighbourhood -- which probably ends up being much like a city of 100k
itself, meaning you rarely have to venture outside for everyday needs
(shopping, services, culture, even your job if you're lucky).

~~~
mafribe

        there is probably a point somewhere between 
        those two points where the gains are only 
        marginal.
    

I think we have not reached it in any city currently on earth. I think the
whole earth's population could live in a space the size e.g. of Texas, if that
space was as densely populated as London (which is not that dense). In such a
scenario it would be near trivial to provide everybody with top-notch public
transport, waste disposal and so on.

    
    
       In the latter, you can only walk in your general 
       neighbourhood 
    

That's true, but why is this a problem? For a sustainable, walkable city it's
only relevant that all key infrastructure (e.g. schools, shopping, leisure,
parks ...) is within walking distance and this infrastructure gets replicated
in bigger cities.

~~~
morsch
Of course there exist many places where we have not reached the point of
marginal gains (and hence massive room for improvement), but you don't make an
argument why you think we haven't reached that point anywhere on Earth.

I think you underestimate the practical difficulties of providing 7 billion
people with top-notch public transport and other public services, and there is
no precedent of what a region the size of Texas with an average density of
10k/km2 would even look like (though there are artists' renditions, most of
them dystopian). But anyway, if that could be done, it could just as well be
done if you split everyone into groups of 200k to 2m and settled them in
smaller regions of similar density. And that's not a hypothetical, that's what
we call a city now, and they work fine.

 _That 's true, but why is this a problem? For a sustainable, walkable city
it's only relevant that all key infrastructure (e.g. schools, shopping,
leisure, parks ...) is within walking distance and this infrastructure gets
replicated in bigger cities._

I agree. I'm not saying that cities larger than 10m are a problem, per se, I'm
just saying that smaller, dense cities get you most of the advantages from a
quality of living and services aspect. I think it's a matter of taste whether
you prefer to live in a city of 50k, 100k, 500k or 2m, and all of these are
broadly similar in terms of sustainability.

~~~
mafribe

       underestimate the practical difficulties
    

My point is not that this is easy/hard, but rather: it's easier to provide top
notch infra structure for the worlds population if it is concentrated in a few
dense urban centres, rather than spread out. I find this hard to contest. Just
think about distance, bearing in mind that the cost of sewage systems, rail
(over- and underground), fibre-optic cables and so on basically tracks
distance.

    
    
       if you split everyone into groups of 200k to 2m 
    

This is an interesting point. B b b but ...

I cannot think of an _existing_ city with 200k inhabitants and great
infrastructure. I can't even think of a city with 2m inhabitants whose
infrastructure can compete with world leaders such as Tokio, Manhattan, Hong
Kong and the like. And even in these places the best infrastructure is found
in the densest parts of the city, not in the outskirts.

Note that the cities you have in mind, say European cities of 200k - 1m size,
are rather spread out, and low density. I have lived in enough of those.

But it would be really interesting to have cities that have 200k - 1m
inhabitants and are extremely dense like central Hong Kong. Such small cities
may be big and dense enough to have the economies of scale of their larger
rivals. But, as pointed out by "vidarh", they would not remotely match
megacities in terms of interesting cultural life.

    
    
       not a hypothetical, 
    

I don't think it works that well. European cities of 200k - 2m are car-centric
in my experience. I supect China would run into major problems if its
population live in low-density European style cities with 200k inhabitants
each.

~~~
vidarh
> But it would be really interesting to have cities with that have 200k - 1m
> inhabitants and are extremely dense like central Hong Kong. They may be big
> and dense enough to have the economies of scale of their larger rivals. But,
> as pointed out by "vidarh", they would not remotely match megacities in
> terms of interesting cultural life.

I think with that kind of density, if you go to 1m-2m size, you have a
sufficient base for very regular high capacity public transport to other
similar sized high density cities very near.

E.g. Macau fascinates me (though I've never visited). It's a fairly small city
- roughly 643,100 people (2015 estimate) - , yet it's spread out over a
positively tiny area - about 30km^2. Overall density of 18,568/km2. If you
condensed London into smaller cities with that density, you could have e.g.
split London into four cities of about 120km^2 each, and still free up more
than 1000km^2 for green belts or low density zones around them, and yet they'd
still be near enough to each other for it be pretty much as easy to travel
between the areas as today, and the increased density in each city might even
cut down total travel times in many cases.

The biggest challenge with something like that would be disciplined planning,
beause obviously if you put big, dense cities like that near each other, the
land in between would become immensely desirable.

~~~
mafribe
I agree, this would be a fascinating experiment. 2m city on around 50 km2 is
almost completely walkable, and certainly bicycleable. It would be just about
big enough to have an interesting cultural life. I wonder why historically
such a city has not evolved.

~~~
ghaff
I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the fact that density is expensive
in terms of building and infrastructure and also that many people don't
especially want density as a matter of choice. As a result, most cities that
have highly dense areas largely created those after they had already built out
into surrounding areas. (The somewhat exceptions are geographically
constrained areas. Even pre-skyscrapers there were very dense areas on
Manhattan like the Lower East Side although presumably a return to tenement
living conditions isn't a desirable future for cities.)

~~~
mafribe
I don't think density is expensive, on the contrary, density is cheap due to
economies of scale.

I think one reason might be food production and transport. Before the
invention of refrigeration, fertiliser, mass transport, humans had to live
rather close to food production, which stands in the way of density.

Another reason might have been that really dense living required the ability
to build high-rise houses, with concomitant requirements for being able to
pump water high up, have elevators and so on.

Reliable sewage systems and provision of fresh water was another problem.

Some of the above became widely available only at the end of the 19th,
beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the automobile encouraged sub-
urbanisation.

It may be only know that small, yet very dense cities are possible.

------
sakri
The article started off so promising. Just when I reached the part where I
expected the author to begin making their point, it was over and all I saw
were comments.

~~~
toyg
Not just that: towards the end he started talking about "winners", like
population growth was always a positive. Clearly he's never been to Mexico
City or one of those Chinese megacities he seems to envy.

------
chvid
From the article:

"Since 2000, this "urban draining" has been reversed, largely as a result of
migration from beyond national borders."

Is this correct?

For Copenhagen the urban draining ended in the 1980es.

As far as I know most European capitals had a similar development and were
growing comfortly in 1990es.

The change coincided with the end of the cold war and the wave of growth,
increased global trade and migration that it enabled.

~~~
stevoski
I think the urban draining referred to the inner core of each city, not the
entire metro area.

------
pjc50
I boggled at a map of big cities which included Bradford but not Edinburgh; I
think they're counting
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Yorkshire_Urban_Area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Yorkshire_Urban_Area)
as "Bradford". Of course a built-up area doesn't have a unitary urban
government, which can result in planning anomalies.

~~~
darkr
Yeah - I was confused by that. Bradford has a population of 293,277, whereas
Leeds (15 miles down the road, border to border and included in the larger
West Yorkshire stats) has a population of 751,500.

It seems a bit of a push to categorise several small cities and larger towns
separated by miles of rolling hills and countryside as a "Megacity"

------
smegel
I came away less than convinced after reading that.

------
jensen123
I'm not a history expert, but wasn't it basically the industrial revolution
that made the city important? Before then, most people were farmers, and the
cities didn't matter that much, no? Ok, so how do the latest technological
developments, such as computers and Internet affect things? It makes online
shopping and remote work possible, so you no longer need a city for those
things. The only thing that I can see that you still really need a big city
for is an interesting social life, and admittedly, that is important.

~~~
ghaff
>but wasn't it basically the industrial revolution that made the city
important

Not really. Cities were important since basically the transition from hunter-
gatherers to agriculture going back to Babylon and Nineveh.

>The only thing that I can see that you still really need a big city for is an
interesting social life, and admittedly, that is important.

Which isn't to everyone's tastes but there does appear to be real and
perceived value in concentrating specific industries. As others have remarked
many times, it's ironic that the industry that should be among the most
amenable to being distributed has instead so concentrated in specific places
like the Bay area. (With the result that so many people have convinced
themselves their life is over if they can't work there that they'll put most
of their income into a crappy apartment.)

------
bb101
Istanbul is as European as Shanghai is American. Turkey is not part of Europe.
Whereas other metropolitan areas that are _very_ European are simply left out:
Moscow, St Petersburg & Belgrade.

~~~
mda
Ah, the tired knee jerk comment whenever Turkey and Europe mentioned. What
exactly makes Istanbul a non European city?

~~~
PopsiclePete
How do you _define_ European, anyway? Is Moscow a European city? How about
Tbilisi? Tel Aviv _feels_ pretty European to me as well.

I realize it's not PC to talk about these thing in the open, but Europeans do
share some form of common cultural heritage that unites them - they're all
part of the West and Western Civilization and all that implies.

Historically, Istanbul was always part of "The Orient" \- it's where Europe
ended.

I'm from Eastern Europe originally, which has a complex relationship with
Turkey - Ottoman Empire and all that. Most people I know do _not_ think Turkey
is part of Europe, nor that it should be ever let in. And that position is
considered "soft" compared to how the Greeks feel about it - whoooooo boy.

~~~
toyg
_> Historically, Istanbul was always part of "The Orient" \- it's where Europe
ended._

That is factually wrong in so many ways.

To start with, the archipelagos and coasts between today-Greece and today-
Turkey shared a common history right about the time "western civilization" is
commonly supposed to be born.

Then the Roman Empire happened and Constantinople became central to the whole
enterprise, in many ways more Roman than Rome, to the point of surviving
almost unscathed the fall of its Western counterpart in a myriad of tribal
wars. In the meantime, one guy born in today-Turkey went on to become St. Paul
and basically rewrite the Christian gospel as he saw fit.

Istanbul "left Europe" only when the Ottoman conquest happened; and the
Ottomans themselves quickly rebranded Constantinople as their capital, openly
stating that they were the true heirs of the fallen Roman Empire. Even at this
time, with the follow-up of crusading and so on, Venetian ships were busy
building cultural and economic bridges between today-Turkey and today-Italy.
Despite the friction of Islam and Christianity, Mediterranean traders went
along better than either side ever did with their barbarous Northern
counterparts.

The fracture that Islamization brought never quite healed, and you can argue
about Turkey being "different" from mainland Europe ever since the Ottomans;
but you simply cannot say that it's "always" been like that, there is just no
factual basis for that statement.

Regarding the views of this or that population about Turkey, they are not
unique. Someone was busy this morning on HN arguing that the French don't
think the UK belongs in Europe. I know plenty of Swedish people who don't
think Finland is Europe, let alone Russia. Personally, the low level of
civility demonstrated at various points by several politicians in Hungary,
Poland and so on, could very well mean they are not Europeans either. That is
not the point. You build the future by looking ahead, not by looking back.

------
xemoka
This is in line with the philosophy of Jane Jacobs. Check-out some of her
ideas regarding the City as the true measure of macroeconomic analysis:
[http://www.zompist.com/jacobs.html](http://www.zompist.com/jacobs.html)
[previously discussed:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10834435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10834435)]

------
krschultz
I would love to see a map of the US arranged like this. New York is often
undersized in statistics because so much of the metropolitan area really
exists in New Jersey or West Chester. The fact that the eastern parts of
Brookly & Queens count towards NYC while Jersey City & Hudson County doesn't
feels like an accident of geography and not an actual distinction that
matters.

~~~
Grishnakh
This is exactly why I think many state borders in the US need to be redrawn,
for better administrative efficiency and less political problems. New Jersey
as a state should not exist, at all. The northern half should be part of a new
city-state called "New York City", which includes not only present-day NYC
boroughs, but Jersey City, Newark, and the rest of northern NJ in the west,
White Plains and all that area to the north, and Stamford and the eastern half
of Connecticut to the east, as well as all of Long Island.

The southern half of NJ should be part of a new city-state called
"Philadelphia", which also includes Philly, the surrounding area in PA, and
maybe Newark Delaware.

This pattern should be repeated across the nation, with state lines redrawn so
that no large metro area crosses a state border. If a metro area crosses a
state border, we're doing it wrong: there should be a clear hierarchy with
towns/cities being lower-level than states, being lower-level than the federal
government, and having cities spanning states breaks that and creates
confusion and generally a big mess, as is seen with the screwed-up transit
systems between NYC and NJ.

While they're at it, they should re-organize the states so they're roughly the
same population. So tiny-population states like Rhode Island and Vermont and
Wyoming need to be merged with neighbors somehow, and huge-population states
like California and Texas need to be broken up. This would lead to better
representation in the Senate.

There's a web page here about someone's idea along these lines:
[http://www.tjc.com/38states/](http://www.tjc.com/38states/) This was a class
project in the 70s, but the idea is sound and makes even more sense now with
greater urbanization since then. They also reduce the total number of states,
which would save taxpayer money overall by reducing administrative overhead.

------
paublyrne
When the megacorps like Alphabet and Apple start building their own cities,
the nation state will really be in trouble.

~~~
johnchristopher
Why build it ? It's far easier to lobby the current nation states to get what
they need. They just have to keep enough of the public funded government
policies and infrastructures they need to continue to strive.

~~~
eru
> Why build it ? It's far easier to lobby the current nation states to get
> what they need.

You are truly an optimist. Google can't even get Mountain View to allow them
to put up a few skyscrapers.

"Google’s plans to build housing on its Mountain View campus in Silicon Valley
are being resisted on the ground that residents might keep pets, which could
harm the local owl population."
([http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21647614-poor-land-
use...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21647614-poor-land-use-worlds-
greatest-cities-carries-huge-cost-space-and-city))

~~~
theklub
Seems like google could just move anywhere they wanted or threaten to and the
city would have to comply.

~~~
eru
Google already has moved: they have offices around the globe, Sydney,
Singapore, New York, London, etc. They still rely on Mountain View as their
main campus.

------
flexie
I would like to see that map with metro areas but with GDP figures (and/or GDP
per capita) in stead. I find GDP per capita figures hard to find for cities.

~~~
jld89
You can find it here, with the original sized maps and the original article:

[http://www.catataxis.com/index.php/tag/city-
states/](http://www.catataxis.com/index.php/tag/city-states/)

~~~
flexie
Thanks!

