…or red courtesy phone for Mr. Friedman.
“The aerotropolis and authoritarians go hand in hand. The first is a city built from scratch to chase economies of speed; the second are the only ones to sign off on a mammoth construction project before it’s too late. It’s no accident Kasarda has found early adopters in the Middle East and China, followed close behind by Asian nations with a legacy of military rule—Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand among them.”
“This is why Dubai is so dazzling to Kasarda; China too. It took as long to air the grievances surrounding Heathrow’s Terminal 5 as it did to build Beijing’s epic new one from from raw ground. There was no debate in this instance, nor was there any over a third runway or the second, separate hub planned for the capital—where, no one knows, because the government will simply do what it did at the site of the current one, which was to flatten fifteen villages and resettle ten thousand residents without compensation. Kasarda was awed by the ministry’s rationale: “Democracy sacrifices efficiency.”
Compare and Contrast
The T Word versus BILL COLLINS: This recession isn’t temporary