All Hail Paul Romer heir to Henry the Lion

Back around the 12th century a Germanic Prince Henry the Lion desperately wanted to bring merchants to the crazy Beserker, Viking plundered coast of the Baltic Sea. Henry fought off many invaders, pirates, and Slavic hoards. After a while he finally seized upon a small village called Lubek[technically spelled with two little dots over the "u"]. As first order of business, he beheaded the notorious pirate Niclot the Obotrite. So things were off to a smashing start, he then set about making Lubek the seat of a diocese of merchant villages. To attract merchants to this lawless land, he setup what is called today a set of "most honorable civic rights." Basically, the city was setup outside of the feudal system, a council of local merchants governed the town, trade restrictions were relaxed, and any of the merchants who settled there were exempt from paying duties or taxes. Henry ended up creating an economic alliance of over 200 cities.
Now in present day, there is an economist from Stanford, Paul Romer, who would like to implement similar ideas for developing countries. Create an international city were trade and business practices are relaxed, in the first wave money flies in from foreign investors, in the second wave as people settle and develop the area businesses begin flowing into the country who charters the city. One such example of this is the city of Hong Kong. During its time apart from China, Britain developed a large business mecca. When Hong Kong returned to China, the Chinese government decided to allow Hong Kong to continue with the same lack of regulations and free trade they had experienced up to that point. Now, China uses Hong Kong as a template to develop other cities across its country, and in many ways has become a much more liberal country in terms of business. They still have some problems with human rights but hey. Middle Eastern countries like Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, and Oman have also begun to create cities like this with much success.
The idea that Romer offers is to create charter cities like this all over the world, especially in developing nations. However, he points out that in some places cities like this on U.S. soil could jump start the American economy as well. One example for something the U.S. has which is in some ways similar is Las Vegas. Many laws are relaxed in Las Vegas, and the city itself generates millions of revenue for the state as well as providing millions of jobs, not just in the city, but in the surrounding area for the purpose of supplies, housing, and infrastructure. Personally, you may know, I think Las Vegas is a hell hole, but perhaps if a few states were allowed to create similar hell holes, like international cities, where more so than Vegas, the cities would be freer in their trade and restrictions, then the country would prosper financially.
Now, I really don't know that much about economics, but I did find the idea interesting. Merely, in terms of the way in which cities such as Lubek and Hong Kong have influenced entire regions politically and economically in their given times. I should mention that though Paul Romer is highly respected, there are many people out there who call him a nut. I began to investigate some of this stuff from an article in the Atlantic Monthly if you're interested. My first paragraph is pretty much a paraphrase of the first half of the article, my points expanded off of several of its bullet points as well.