THE CASE FOR A CENTRALISED COUNTRY

To Umbria, where the phrase “rolling hills” makes sense at last. Each of the shapely undulations hereabout is crowned or footed by a village with its own life and integrity, even without the northern European second-homers and one freeloading columnist. Always startling to a visitor from a centralised nation is the dispersal of Italy’s glories to not just the secondary but the tertiary towns, and even below. Across the Tuscan border in Arezzo, population 99,000, we tour early Renaissance masterworks, boutiques commensurate with a big city and the wonky piazza from Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful. Flying back via London — the life-giving scale of it — I wonder which country has it right. Is it wiser to centralise economic and cultural life in one city, the better to make it world-class, or to spread it all about? Some countries have a large enough population to do both (the US, Japan). Some are too small to have much choice (Denmark, Singapore). But for those in the 20m to 100m population range, there is something of a trade-off between concentration and proliferation. It is the choice between the French model and the German. It is the choice between the South Korean and the Canadian. Justice would seem to argue for dispersal. True, there are advantages of size in London that there are not in Rome. But most Italians probably have more nearer to hand than most Brits. And while both countries chafe at their capitals, the resentment feels less vicious in Italy, where even Rome is just one multiple larger than Milan, which is only one-half bigger than Naples, which itself barely edges out Florence. Italy “achieved” this spread by unifying quite late in its history. But anyone designing a country from scratch right now would choose the same balance over a unipolar model. And perhaps they would be wrong. There is a case for concentration too, and it goes beyond municipal vainglory. In previous centuries, nations scrambled for resources abroad. If there is an international race in this century, it is for talent. Coveted as they are, the ablest people can choose to live in the cities with the very deepest capital markets, the very widest dining options, the very largest hub airports and remuneration terms. Is it wiser to focus cultural life in one city, to make it world-class — or to spread it all about? For a nation, having several wonderful cities will not be enough to tempt the mobile and gifted. It will have to have one city in the elite tier. Three decades since the internet promised the abolition of geography, success in, say, corporate law or consulting or finance still requires at least a stint, if not a career, in one of a small number of world cities. Even as that number grows, it will probably always be a select club. Look at the efforts to break in or stay in. Dublin already dominates Ireland. Paris already dominates France. And still each nation’s government is angling for its capital to take a share of any business that London forfeits after Brexit. As patriots, they worry about concentration and its discontents — in Cork or Marseille. As pragmatists, they know how a country’s bread is buttered. Building up one big city makes sense. And if this reads as so much bean-counting, consider a higher-minded case for the unipolar model. Ursula von der Leyen, president-elect of the European Commission, credits a year in “seething” London for her “inner freedom” and her habit of “trying everything”. The sentiment is still heard among young Europeans today. To perform this kind of emancipating role, a city does not just need a tolerant culture, which, after all, Hamburg or Berlin also offer. It needs monstrous scale. Yes, it will therefore tug the rest of the country out of shape. In a medium-sized nation, critical mass in one place implies a relative deficit somewhere else. The anti-metro rancour presently fouling the atmosphere in Britain and France is a touch less strong in Von der Leyen’s Germany, with its scrupulous balance of regions. It is just that in a world of nicely equalised countries, we would not have these outsize urban havens, sending out their homing beacons to people who wish to create themselves anew. A stopover in London was as restorative as a holiday in Umbria. The all-encompassing metropolis or the harmony of regions: most countries have to choose. Individuals don’t.