Can One Economist Replicate the Shenzhen 'Miracle'? In this week's magazine, Adam Davidson writes about an economist who has advanced a radical proposal for developing countries: build a city from scratch. Take some uninhabited land, set up an autonomous government and assure investors that this city is safe for business. Paul Romer, the economist who came up with the idea, has persuaded Honduras to give it a shot. His advice was to start with a strip of land that could accommodate 10 million people. If that sounds overly ambitious, consider what happened to the city of Shenzhen after China made it a testing ground for free-market reforms. In 1980, Chinese officials drew a border around one section of the city. Inside that border, firms were free to hire whom they wanted, workers could work where they wanted and the government would not confiscate profits. Over the next 30 years, the population of what was once a fishing village of less than 500,000 exploded to a metropolis of 10 million residents. Its G.D.P. grew from less than $10 million to more than $100 billion. China's president, while on a tour of the city, declared it "a miracle in the world's history of industrialization, urbanization and modernization." See Romer's latest TED Talk for some of the challenges he faces in trying to reproduce that miracle in Honduras.