Centers of Progress: An Interview with Chelsea Follett

What social or political conditions make a place ripe for innovation? In Centers of Progress, Chelsea Follett endeavors to answer that question.

I recently spoke with Chelsea Follett, managing editor of HumanProgress.org and policy analyst at Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, about her new book, Centers of Progress: 40 Cities That Changed the World. Here is our discussion, edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Walker-Werth: What led you to write a book about cities, and why these specific ones?

Chelsea Follett: I started out by making a list of the different aspects of modern life and civilization that people often take for granted—everything from a stable food supply and proper sanitation system to written language. I didn’t start out thinking, this book is going to be about cities, but I found that, overwhelmingly, you can trace the greatest achievements, inventions, and innovations to specific cities or population centers. That raises an interesting question: Why cities? And why certain cities and not others? I think that discussing and debating those questions can help us figure out the keys to cultivating innovation today.

Walker-Werth: Based on the cities you’ve studied, what particular social or political conditions make a place ripe for innovation?

Follett: I noticed three main conditions. The first is people. When you have more people engaging in discussion and debate, exchange of goods and services, and so forth, they tend to produce more prosperity, and they’re more likely to hit upon a new idea that will improve the world. That explains why, even when the vast majority of people lived in rural areas, new ideas, inventions, and innovations tended to emerge from cities.

But that doesn’t explain why only certain cities. All cities, by definition, have a lot of people in them. That brings us to the second condition: peace. By “peace” I mean

relative peace because most of human history was much more violent than the modern day, even though that’s hard for some to imagine. Cities generally reached their creative peaks during times of relative peace and stability. Now, some people disagree with this idea. They think that war, and the interstate competition it drives, pushes people to come up with new inventions. Some examples they often give are computing and the internet. Some think that we wouldn’t have had those as quickly as we did if it weren’t for World War II. But back then, you had various Europeans and Americans working on early computing technology separately, in secrecy. They were not able to put their heads together or collaborate. Even various Americans weren’t able to work together because of the secrecy required by war. Although we can’t rerun history to see what would have happened without a world war, it’s possible that we could have had computing technology earlier. Think where we might be today with AI and the internet. In my view, peace disproportionately drives innovation forward and provides the best conditions for it.

There’s one more condition, last but by no means least, which is freedom. No matter how many people you have gathered together in conditions of relative stability, if they are not free to discuss new ideas—to experiment and try new things—then that precludes any possibility of progress. Freedom is the most powerful ingredient for making a city a center of progress.

Walker-Werth: In what ways does freedom contribute to a city’s prosperity?

Follett:Economic freedom is particularly important to cultivating a city as a center of progress. Most can intuitively grasp how it enables people to create new businesses that serve people’s needs and raises living standards, as happened during the golden ages of Hong Kong and San Francisco. But most people don’t realize just how many different kinds of progress can flow from economic freedom. Some examples in the book include the fact that writing was initially developed not for recording the genealogies of kings or writing poetry but for the purpose of bookkeeping, with some of the earliest surviving writings being business receipts. And many people may not know that Isaac Newton’s Principia, the pinnacle of the scientific revolution, was funded by a donation from the heir of a thriving soap business—a soap mogul! So many times in history the prosperity generated by entrepreneurs and free enterprise funded incredible advances.

Another example is art. So many people have this idea that true artists must create art for its own sake without any monetary reward. But if we look at some of history’s most beloved artworks, whether classical music or the art of Renaissance Florence, all these brilliant artworks were made possible by financial patronage.

Walker-Werth: You wrote about the importance of philosophy for the growth of Athens. What philosophic ideas or principles contribute to thriving cities?

Follett: A culture of openness to different viewpoints has proven incredibly important throughout history. One great example of this in the book is the atmosphere in Amsterdam during the Dutch Golden Age. It was a melting pot of ideas, accepting intellectual and religious refugees and bringing together people who might not have been accepted in most other places in Europe. People there were so open-minded that they tolerated views of figures as diverse as John Locke, the father of liberalism, and Thomas Hobbes, an absolute monarchist—opposite ends of the political spectrum. Hobbes was able to publish books in Amsterdam that no other press in Europe would touch. But the people of Amsterdam welcomed debate and discussion of all these different viewpoints. So, when I say openness, I’m talking about welcoming debate between a diversity of different viewpoints.

Walker-Werth: I live in England, which was a major center of progress in the 17th through 19th centuries. Many people attribute that to physical resources, such as its geography as an island, plentiful coal, and so on. Others attribute it to social or political factors such as the protection of property rights in the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. Which do you think is more important: geographic or social/political factors?

Follett: I may be biased because I work in a think tank, but I believe that ideas can change the world. If you look at the cities that have been the most impressive throughout history, you get some such as Hong Kong—once called the “barren island,” a place with practically no resources—that then became one of the most dazzling cosmopolises in the world thanks to policies of economic freedom. However, it’s also now a tragic case, because the pillars upon which Hong Kong’s prosperity was built are crumbling in the tightening fists of the Chinese Communist Party. There’s a cautionary tale there. But the lesson of Hong Kong’s rise is that you don’t need to be blessed with a remarkable array of natural resources for your city to succeed if you have the right policies and institutions. Many places in the world have abundant resources and yet are not thriving, often because they don’t have those conditions for progress. Many are enmeshed in war and violence rather than peace and stability, and many don’t have the level of freedom needed for people to reach their full potential. So, although natural resources can certainly be helpful, the other conditions—which are fortunately within our control—are what enable a city to reach its full potential.

Walker-Werth: What can we learn today—when Europe and America seem to be losing the race for innovation—from the cities of the past? How can we reestablish and reinvigorate innovation in our countries today?

Follett: Sadly, another lesson that I took away from researching and writing the book is that the golden age of a city tends not to last very long. There are so many cities that once were but are no longer centers of progress, such as Baghdad. Today, it’s one of the most dangerous cities in the world—certainly not a center of progress. But if you go back to the Abbasid Dynasty and the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad was home to a relatively open and tolerant society where people from different places and religions could gather and explore ideas. The Grand Baghdad Library has been called the House of Wisdom. People made incredible breakthroughs in astronomy, literature, mathematics, and other areas. That was all lost when a faction rose to power that was much more close-minded, much more xenophobic, much less tolerant of people from other religions or backgrounds. They quickly unraveled the conditions that had enabled Baghdad to thrive. Then its ultimate downfall came in the form of war—the end of peace. It is said that the Tigris River ran black with ink because so many scholarly works were thrown into it during the Mongol invasion.

One of the unfortunate lessons that we need to take from history is that the conditions for progress are extremely fragile, and they can be lost easily. We must be vigilant in trying to protect those conditions. If you are fortunate enough to live in a city that is thriving and innovative, preserving peace and freedom is vital. That includes, among other freedoms, freedom of speech so that people can discuss new ideas, as well as economic freedom so that enterprises can try out new things, create more prosperity, and raise living standards.

Walker-Werth: What are some of the more obscure places that you talk about in the book?

Follett: No matter how much of a history buff you are, I can guarantee that you will not have heard of at least some of the cities in this book. For example, few will know Mohenjo Daro, a ruined city from the Indus Valley civilization, whose remarkable achievements in sanitation surpassed even the advanced plumbing of the later Roman civilization. (It’s another cautionary tale on how progress can be lost.) Or there’s Nan Madol, a stone city built atop a coral reef in today’s Micronesia that showcases the far reach of the earliest seafarers. There are so many remarkable instances of progress from across the world.

Walker-Werth: Where can people follow your work?

Follett: You can find the book by going to centersofprogress.com. You can also buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, or wherever books are sold, as well as on the Cato Institute’s book website. You can follow my work and the work of my colleagues at HumanProgress.org. We are on all of the major social media platforms, including Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we also have a podcast. I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter as well.

Walker-Werth: Thank you for writing the book and for taking the time to speak with me about it.

Follett: Thank you, Thomas.