A hundred years ago, cities added new infrastructure that simultaneously transformed living conditions and supported economic expansion. But there is a long time lag between decisions to create or expand public facilities to support social and environmental development, and their actual impact. Disillusioned in the '80s by the failure of the policies of the '50s and '60s, governments often preferred to withdraw from cities altogether, passing off responsibility to regional or local governments, or substituting sectoral policies and entitlement programmes for urban policies. 12 Today's economic policy prescriptions are even more sectoral than in the past, and even more focused on getting the machinery right in the pursuit of economic efficiency as a goal in itself. And 'in the long term, we all die'.
Cities are spatial entities.
They exist because the benefits of agglomeration of economic and social activity, at least at this point, outweigh the costs. They are the places where externalities interact in a most intensive way - and often with unpredictable and undesirable results. The experience of just such constraints on national economic performance from inadequate management of urban development in Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur has led national governments in the respective countries to launch significant programs of urban strategic planning and infrastructure investment in a bid to improve their cities and maintain their nation's competitive edge. Urban issues, and the quality and nature of urban development outcomes both for people and for their environment are considered third or fourth order problems - and problems subject to solution by higher order sectoral policies rather than policies with spatial effects. Perhaps cities should secede and declare themselves to be nations - in which case their financing, and their economic, social and environmental futures would instantly become respectable subjects for policy analysis and development.