Unique Locations of Rich Cities
How modern cities like Singapore, London, and Amsterdam got rich as well as historical cities like Athens and Tenochtitlan
Recently, on Twitter, I saw someone write a long thread praising the economic miracle of Singapore. It began by writing about what a poor backwater the city was. No resources, ethnical conflicts, surrounded by enemies and somehow this uppity town turned into an incredibly rich metropolis.
We are sold a fairy tale of how a city that had nothing was turned into a runaway success through nothing besides clever planning and policies. These stories about Singapore pop up frequently. And people eat up this story unquestionably every time.
The fundamental problem is that most people don’t grasp what makes cities or countries rich. That is what I intend to rectify in this article. I want to go through numerous cities and explain what conditions made them rich. To understand this process, it is also worth looking at historical cities as well. It is not always obvious why some cities were rich in the past but average today.
