城市变迁的经济启示 What cities tell us about the economy

The economic indicators that surround us are familiar, as are the criticisms they attract. The consumer prices index doesn’t fully capture the boon of new products; unemployment figures do not count workers who have given up the job hunt in despair; gross domestic product (GDP) includes bad things if they have a market price, and excludes good things if they don’t.

我们熟悉身边的种种经济指标，也熟悉它们所招致的各种批评。居民消费价格指数(CPI)并不能完全反映新产品带来的好处；失业率数据并不统计那些因绝望已放弃找工作的人；国内生产总值(GDP)会包括那些有市场价的糟糕事物，而不包括那些没有市场价的好东西。

But there is one fundamental flaw in all these statistics that is rarely discussed: they are almost always applied to countries. It is not impossible to find educated guesses about the GDP of Cambridge, or the inflation rate in Mumbai, and there is nothing conceptually troubling about trying to calculate either. Yet most economic statistics describe the nation state.

不过，在所有这些统计过程中，有一个根本缺陷我们很少讨论到：所有这些指标几乎总是只适用于国家。对剑桥市的GDP或孟买的通胀率进行有根据的猜测并非不可能，试图计算这两项数据在理念上也没有任何问题。然而，多数经济统计数据描述的却是整个国家。

This is odd, because the nation state is a political unit, not an economic one. Policy does influence the economy, of course — national authorities can impose a common interest rate, tax rates and regulations. But, as the unorthodox thinker and writer Jane Jacobs used to argue, the natural unit of macroeconomic analysis is not a nation state at all. It is a city and its surrounding region.

这一点很奇怪，因为国家是个政治单位，不是经济单位。当然，政策确实会影响经济——国家当局能够实施统一的利率、税率和监管规定。然而，正如非正统思想家和作家简雅各布斯(Jane Jacobs)过去一直主张的，宏观经济分析的天然单位绝不是整个国家，而是一座城市及其周边地区。

Aberdeen, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester are subject to some similarities by virtue of their shared participation in something we call “the British economy” but economically they are quite different. Their relative fortunes fluctuate because they are pushed and pulled by different forces.

由于都参与了所谓的“英国经济”，阿伯丁、卡迪夫、格拉斯哥和曼彻斯特存在一些共同之处。然而，从经济角度而言它们非常不同。它们的相对财富状况会上下波动，因为它们被不同的因素推动向前和拖后腿。

In her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations , Jacobs zooms in still further, looking at “Shinohata”, a pseudonymous Japanese hamlet a hundred miles north-west of Tokyo. (She relies on a rich description of Shinohata by sociologist Ronald Dore.) Shinohata was initially a subsistence economy, supplemented by woodland foraging and a little silk farming. In the 20th century, the villagers gained some time thanks to improved agricultural techniques, and they used it to produce more silk cocoons. After the war, Tokyo’s expansion pulled Shinohata into its economic orbit. The booming Japanese capital became a market for Shinohata’s fresh fruit and wild oak mushrooms; Tokyo’s government paid for bridges and roads; its capitalists built a factory; its labour market lured young men and women from their village existence. The tale is intricate and unpredictable; Japan’s economic miracle, as recorded in the national statistics, was actually the sum of countless unrecorded stories of local development.

在雅各布斯的《城市与国家财富》(Cities and the Wealth of Nations)一书中，她的视线进一步拉近，落在了位于东京西北一百英里一个化名“蓧原”(Shinohata)的日本小村庄。（她的书依赖于社会学家罗纳德多尔(Ronald Dore)对蓧原的详细描述。）起初，蓧原的经济为自给自足型，以森林里的采集活动以及少量养蚕为补充。20世纪，由于农业技术的提高，村民们有了一定的富余时间，他们用这些时间生产更多蚕茧。战后，东京的扩张将蓧原拉入了它的经济轨道。急速发展的日本首都为蓧原的新鲜水果和野生香菇提供了市场；东京政府出资修建了桥梁和道路；东京的资本家则开办了工厂；东京的就业市场吸引青年男女摆脱农村生活方式。整个故事错综复杂而又不可预测；而以国家为单位的统计数据所记录到的日本经济奇迹，实际上是无数个没有记录下来的地方发展故事的总和。

Jacobs is not the only person to argue that economic development may be profitably studied through a magnifying glass. A new research paper from three development economists, William Easterly, Laura Freschi and Steven Pennings, offers “A Long History of a Short Block” — a Shinohata-style tale of the economic development of a single 486ft block of Greene Street, between Houston and Prince Street in downtown Manhattan.

认为通过观察经济局部的细微之处来研究经济发展或能取得丰硕成果的不只是雅各布斯一个人。三名发展经济学家威廉伊斯特利(William Easterly)、劳拉弗雷斯基(Laura Freschi)和史蒂文洠腟斯(Steven Pennings)，在新发表的一篇研究论文中，展示了“一个小街区的漫长历史”(A Long History of a Short Block)，即关于一个486英尺长的街区的蓧原式故事。该街区位于格林尼街上，在曼哈顿下城的休斯顿街和王子街之间。

Easterly, a former World Bank researcher, is well known in development circles for his scepticism about how much development can ever be planned, and how much credit political leaders and their expert advisers deserve when things go well.

在发展经济学圈内，曾在世行(WB)任研究员的伊斯特利以对两个问题的质疑而闻名，一个是人们能在多大程度上“规划”发展，另一个是良好的发展应在多大程度上归功于政界领袖及其专家顾问。

“Here’s a block where there is no leader; there’s no president or prime minister of this block,” he explained to me. Greene Street, he suggests, offers us a perspective on the more spontaneous, decentralised features of economic development.

他向我解释说：“这是个没有领导的街区。它没有总统或总理。”他认为，格林尼街为我们提供了一个视角，从它身上可以观察到经济发展更具自发性和分散性的一些特点。

Greene Street’s history certainly offers plenty of rapid and surprising changes to observe. The Dutch, who had colonised Manhattan in 1624, decided in 1667 to cede what is now New York to the British, in exchange for guarantees over their possession of what is now Suriname in Latin America. The Dutch thought sugar-rich Suriname was a better bet but New York City’s economy is now more than a hundred times larger than Suriname’s.

格林尼街的历史确实提供了足够多迅速而令人吃惊的变化，可供人们观察。1624年殖民了曼哈顿的荷兰人，在1667年决定，将如今的纽约出让给英国，以换取后者保证让他们占有现在的拉美苏里南地区。荷兰人当时认为，盛产蔗糖的苏里南发展前景更好。然而，如今纽约的经济规模是苏里南的百倍以上。

In 1850, Greene Street was a prosperous residential district with several households who would be multimillionaires in today’s terms. Two large hotels and a theatre opened nearby, and prostitutes started to move in. By 1870, the middle classes had fled and the block was at the heart of one of New York City’s largest sex-work districts.

1850年，格林尼街是一个富人区，当时居住在那里的几户人家相当于今天的百万富翁。后来，附近开了两家大酒店和一家剧院，妓女开始迁入这个街区。到1870年，中产阶级已逃离这个街区，该街区也成为纽约最大性交易区的核心地带。

In the late 19th century, perhaps because property values in the red-light area were low, entrepreneurs swooped in to build large cast-iron stores and warehouses for the garment trade. Greene Street’s fortunes waned when the industry moved uptown after 1910, and property values collapsed. In the 1940s and 1950s, urban planners suggested bulldozing the lot and starting again but a community campaign — famously involving Jacobs herself — fought them off. Property values were revived as artists colonised Greene Street in the 1950s and 1960s, attracted by the large, airy and cheap spaces. None of these changes could easily have been predicted; some are rather mysterious even in retrospect.

到了19世纪末，也许是因为红灯区房价低，众多企业家涌入该街区，盖起了一些铸铁结构的大型商店和仓库，从事服装生意。1910年后，随着该产业迁往上城，格林尼街的命运转衰，房价一落千丈。上世纪四五十年代，城市规划机构曾建议将该街区推平，然后重新开发，然而一场社区运动阻止了他们这样做——众所周知，雅各布斯本人就参与了这场运动。上世纪五六十年代，诸多艺术家被格林尼街空旷、通风而廉价的空间吸引而迁入，这里的房价复苏了。所有这些变化都无法轻易地预测到。即便是回过头来看，有些变化当初为何会发生也是个迷。

The lessons of Greene Street? Getting the basic infrastructure right — streets, water, sanitation, policing — is a good idea. Aggressive planning, knocking down entire blocks in response to temporary weakness, is probably not. Predicting the process of economic development at a local level is a game for suckers. Most importantly, even a tremendous development success — the United States and, within it, New York City — is going to show some deep wrinkles to those who get in close.

格林尼街告诉了我们什么呢？建好基本的基础设施——街道、供水、卫生系统、治安体系——是个不错的主意。而在街区暂时发展得不好时，采取激进的规划、夷平整个街区，则很可能不是个好主意。只有傻子才会去预测某个地方的经济发展进程。最重要的一点是，近距离观察下，即使是发展奇迹的典范（比如美国以及美国的纽约市），也会显露出一些深深的皱纹。