Mark Lutter: charter cities and the urban future

Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Mark Lutter. Lutter is an urban development expert known for his work on charter cities—new urban areas aimed at fostering economic growth and progress. He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Charter Cities Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to building the ecosystem for charter cities, as well as the CEO of Braavos Cities, a charter city development company. He holds a PhD in economics from George Mason University, and a BS in mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park. His interests span progress studies, governance, social dynamics and institution-building, with a belief that creating new cities can spark cultural and economic advancements similar to historical periods like the Renaissance or the Dutch Golden Age. He has been published or quoted in outlets like the Financial Times, The New Yorker, and The Chicago Tribune.

Lutter and Razib discuss diverse topics, from the difficulties of the Prospera project in Honduras, to the possibility of developing San Francisco’s Presidio into an Asian-style super-city. They explore the various pitfalls and possibilities faced when attempting to create new jurisdictions in developing nations in the Caribbean and Latin America, along with the major obstacles to urban innovation in the USA. Lutter outlines the economic case for charter cities, along with the normative values that undergird their creation as bastions of liberty and laboratories of cultural experimentation. Finally, they discuss the Trump administration’s openness to the idea of the “Freedom City” in the Presidio, along with local opposition to the project.