Constantine’s grand idea for a capital, Constantinople, was over-planned and over-elaborate. The high planning and excessive subsidies for the city did not create any wealth. On the contrast, it was only because many years of wealth taken from other parts of the empire were sunk into it that it was wealthy.
Massive wealth transfers of that type do not benefit society.
First off, they are fragile. Wealth spread across an entire far-flung empire will survive catastrophe more readily than wealth concentrated into one city. When Constantinople was burned by invading crusaders, all the manuscripts contained within it were vulnerable to the invaders, and many of the city’s libraries were looted or destroyed. Huge amounts of knowledge were lost or scattered. All humanity lost ground that day due to the destruction. We should condemn the crusaders, but we cannot leave out the sins of the great planners who tried to draw all of Rome’s wealth in knowledge and money to one place.
Secondly, they are misleading. Wealth concentrated into one relatively small area creates a false example which others will seek to emulate. The grand planning and subsidies of Constantinople is one of the legacies of the ancients that we have yet to fully shake off. Many a city planner with some awareness of history dreams that his city will be a Constantinople. Hence, they zone the entire thing, subsidize some parts, ‘preserve’ others past their useful lifespan, and ban entire activities that they feel are at cross-purposes with the plans.
We need to stop making ‘planned cities’. Massive capitals and planned metropolises, symbols of power for governments though they may be, serve no purpose but that of the government. They symbolize a massive transfer of wealth – and pain for all parts of the country which faced taxes and confiscations to subsidize this. They symbolize a top-down control program – and loss of social mobility for everyone in the city or its vicinity. Lastly, they symbolize a great deal of power itself – and loss of liberty for everyone in the country.
When a great city arises in a nation, the dissenters outside of it become rural nobodies,deridedforlackofstyleatbest,calledunpatrioticatworst. They are accused of lacking national pride. Dissenters within the city? The best planned cities allow no such thing if they can avoid it. A bastion of unity and mutual interest… a festering sore of stagnation, immune to new ideas or changes.