<span style="font-weight: bold">Can struggling Caribbean nations be taken over and turned into modern cities?</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">A Caribbean charter city idea? </span>
<span style="font-style: italic">Professor Romer offers "a truly global win-win solution" </span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Was it a pre-modern power grab or a post-modern experiment in good governance? </span>
<span style="font-style: italic">That question was posed by Newsweek </span>in its reporting of Britain's decision to return direct rule to the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The US magazine likened the colonial power grab to the Charter Cities idea proposed by economist Paul Romer of Stanford University.
Under Professor Romer's idea, <span style="font-weight: bold">one or more rich nations can take a chunk of a struggling country and turn it, for a limited period, into a charter city - a place that provides security, economic opportunity, and improved quality of life</span>.
For some it may sound like a new colonialism but he believes that the proposal offers a truly global win-win solution.
"These cities address global poverty by giving people the chance to escape from precarious and harmful subsistence agriculture or dangerous urban slums."
Professor Romer cites the story of Hong Kong, which was administered by Britain before being returned to China.
One of his case proposals is for, say Canada, to could take over local administration of a portion of Cuban territory straddling Guantanamo Bay - with the voluntary agreement of the US and Cuba.
In an interview with BBC Caribbean, Professor Romer discussed Charter Cities with Bertram Niles and whether they could work in the Caribbean.
<span style="font-weight: bold">He is due to visit Jamaica in late November to talk with the government in Kingston on other matters.</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">A Caribbean charter city idea? </span>
<span style="font-style: italic">Professor Romer offers "a truly global win-win solution" </span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Was it a pre-modern power grab or a post-modern experiment in good governance? </span>
<span style="font-style: italic">That question was posed by Newsweek </span>in its reporting of Britain's decision to return direct rule to the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The US magazine likened the colonial power grab to the Charter Cities idea proposed by economist Paul Romer of Stanford University.
Under Professor Romer's idea, <span style="font-weight: bold">one or more rich nations can take a chunk of a struggling country and turn it, for a limited period, into a charter city - a place that provides security, economic opportunity, and improved quality of life</span>.
For some it may sound like a new colonialism but he believes that the proposal offers a truly global win-win solution.
"These cities address global poverty by giving people the chance to escape from precarious and harmful subsistence agriculture or dangerous urban slums."
Professor Romer cites the story of Hong Kong, which was administered by Britain before being returned to China.
One of his case proposals is for, say Canada, to could take over local administration of a portion of Cuban territory straddling Guantanamo Bay - with the voluntary agreement of the US and Cuba.
In an interview with BBC Caribbean, Professor Romer discussed Charter Cities with Bertram Niles and whether they could work in the Caribbean.
<span style="font-weight: bold">He is due to visit Jamaica in late November to talk with the government in Kingston on other matters.</span>
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