Open SEZ: Special Economic Zones & Cities - 新乡市城

By George ELIOT When a new Special Economics Zone (SEZ) is set up, it creates economic activities and generates GDP in three ways which are analogous to the way an airline attracts customers for a newly-launched flight destination: A) By tapping pent-up demand that had existed perviously but had not been met. B) By diverting activities (or airline passengers, respectively) from elsewhere, i.e. by stealing market share from other existing operations. C) By generating new demand that had not existed previously. For example, if an airline has just launched flights from Brighton to New York, A-type passengers are those who have always wanted to go to New York but did not want the hassle of flying from an airport further away; B-type passengers are those who were flying to New York via alternative indirect routes and who can now take the direct flight; and C-type passengers are those who only after seeing the news about the launch of the new destination will develop an interest in going to ...

By George ELIOT Saudi Arabia's ambitious development project NEOM is gaining traction, but the part of it known as "The Line" is for the most part a strategic urban planning mistake. " The Line " is a proposed linear city within NEOM, in northwestern Saudi Arabia. It is supposed to eventually house up to nine million people in a 170-kilometer-long, 200-metre-wide single continuous building that resembles a horizontally-laid skyscraper. Perhaps there is some justification for the part of The Line that follows the Red Sea coast to be a thin development, as coastal projects and beachfront property ribbons typically follow the shape of the beach. However, the part that goes further inland is totally irrational from a development point to continue as a straight line.  All major and minor cities in the world are blobs of concentric agglomeration. And even cities that cannot grow inland because of mountains (e.g. Hong Kong Island) or swamps (e.g. Miami) try to build up...

By George ELIOT PluSEZ & MinuSEZ is a series of analyses of existing or proposed Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Britain's new Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport (ICFGF) is expected to grow on the back of the offshore wind industry in the North Sea (off Scotland's northeast coast). We give it a 50-50 chance of success.  PluSEZ (Advantages): 1) The growth in offshore wind is indeed phenomenal and the cost of generated electricity is commercially competitive, which may make the zone big enough to make the project self-sufficient 2) The government is offering tax and social security concessions. 3) Proximity to Inverness Airport and the inclusion of Inverness Harbour in the freeport area. MinuSEZ (Disadvantages): 1) The land is scattered across 520 hectares in three areas: The Cromarty Firth (including Nigg, Port of Cromarty Firth and Deephaven); Inverness (including Inverness Harbour and Inverness Campus); and Ardersier. The scattered locations may be driven by genuine...

By George ELIOT The ongoing or planned cuts in US (USAID), UK, French and German foreign aid spending create opportunities for the development of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) to fill at least part of the void that has opened up. In a world desperate for economic dynamism, SEZ can activate capital spending and mop up surplus labour. This is what The Economist wrote in January 2024 in an article titled " Can satellite cities help solve Africa’s urbanisation challenges ? " “the point of charter cities is not to help the poorest directly, but indirectly. Strong governance, coupled with fiscal incentives, are intended to attract investment, the benefits of which will ripple through the economy.” The biggest development aid donor countries in the world and their development aid spending (in USD) for 2022 were: USA: $55.3 billion Germany: $35 billion France: $19.6 billion Japan: $17.5 billion UK: $15.7 billion However, in terms of development aid spending as a percentage of GDP per...

By George ELIOT Special Economic Zones (SEZ) have something in common with all living things: they represent a temporary reduction in entropy, against an environment with higher entropy. Entropy as a scientific concept is typically associated with disorder and uncertainty. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the entropy of an isolated system tends to increase over time, meaning that systems naturally move towards greater disorder and less usable energy. However, living things exists as pockets of lower entropy, which indicates greater order and less randomness. Therefore the corresponding higher available energy within living organisms allows this energy to be used for work (e.g. for motion and for biological processes). Whereas the rest of the environment (e.g. the surface of the Earth or open space) tends to converge towards higher entropy, i.e. more disorder and less usable energy.  In a similar way, a successful SEZ has lower entropy, which means it is more orderly t...

By George ELIOT Technology is starting to revolutionise the desert. The combination of abundant and cheap solar power plus energy-efficient seawater desalination will transform the world's desert coasts over the next 10-20 years. This transformation will be of a scale that rivals the development revolution that the air conditioner brought to the world's subtropical, tropical and equatorial regions (such as Texas, Florida and Singapore, respectively).  Any stretch of ocean coast is by definition prime real estate as long as people can live there. So far the vast majority of the world's desert coasts have remained... deserted. But not for long: as soon as fresh water becomes available (which is a function of the cost of electricity that can be used for seawater desalination going down by 90% over a decade), new cities and special economic zones (SEZ) will emerge. Where small scale diesel power plants were used before, "solar-desal" plants are emerging to take their...