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subnational economies. Jacobs says that big cities that provide two related
functions – innovation and import substitution – will grow and develop into
bigger cities with the ability
to shape and reshape economies of settlements geographically distant from their
own. The effects of their import substitution, for example, can ripple out to
smaller cities. Jacobs describes how businesses in Tokyo first began to carry out
bicycle repairs, then they started to replace some of the parts of imported bicycles
with locally made parts until finally whole bicycles were being made there. This
process was then repeated in other smaller Japanese cities.
With the exception of the recent wealth created by the growing New
Zealand dairy industry and better prices for wool and lamb, many rural
communities are still feeling the pinch. In almost every developed nation similar
communities are losing their young people and their banks and shops.
The good news as we saw earlier is that as the world economy gets bigger,
the smallest players become more powerful. When working together they can
overcome the most fearsome of opponents for it is at the local level that feedback
occurs and new learning appears.
Former MP Marilyn Waring came out fighting when she told the New Zealand
Local Government Conference in July 1999:
I refuse to feel disempowered – I refuse to relinquish my rights as a citizen. In western
history despots, tyrants, kings, the church, armies have disenfranchised the people.
Multinationals and the economic fundamentalists will not be next. Accountability to
cross cultural forums of public opinion, and major efforts at representation of the
population must be the reply. There are good grounds to believe that consolidation of