Charter Cities - good idea but not so new

Paul Romer's concept of 'Charter Cities' that operate outside the dysfunctional tangle of a country's existing rules is an idea whose time has come and fits in very well with Dirdem's vision of Direct Democracy. But one must remember that the concept is not that new: the city states in Ancient Greece and the independent City-States in Italy and Germany during the Middle Ages were to all intents and purposes precursors of the Charter City that Romer postulates.