(2010-10-31) Khanna Age Of City States

Parag Khanna thinks the City State will be the key player of the century. Already, more than half the world lives in cities (Urbanization), and the percentage is growing rapidly. But just 100 cities account for 30 percent of the world's economy, and almost all its Innovation.

Many will pose challenges to the countries that give birth to them. For though no nation can succeed without at least one thriving urban anchor -- and even then, a functioning Kabul or Sarajevo is still no guarantee of national survival -- it's also true that globalization allows major cities to pull away from their home states, a reality captured by the massive and potentially dangerous wealth gap between city and countryside in second-world countries such as Brazil, China, India, and Turkey.

Dubai's recent real-estate overreach notwithstanding, emerging city-states along the Persian Gulf are investing at breakneck speed in efficient downtown business districts, offering fast service and tax incentives to relocate. Look for them to use sovereign wealth funds to acquire the latest technology from the West, buy up tracts of agricultural land in Africa to grow their food, and protect their investments through private armies and intelligence services. Alliances of these agile cities are already forming, reminiscent of that trading and military powerhouse of the late Middle Ages, the Hanseatic League along the Baltic Sea.

Anyone who traveled to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup might have noticed how private security forces outnumbered official police two to one, and gated communities protected elites from the vast townships where crime is rampant. Cities -- not so-called Failed State-s like Afghanistan and Somalia -- are the true daily test of whether we can build a better future or are heading toward a dystopian nightmare.

Columbia University scholar Saskia Sassen has done the most to contribute to our thinking about how urban advantage translates into Grand Strategy. As she writes in The Global City, such places are uniquely suited to translate their productive power into "the practice of global control." Her academic work has traced how Europe's largely autonomous Renaissance cities such as Bruges and Antwerp innovated the legal frameworks that enabled the first transnational stock exchanges, setting the stage for international credit and the forerunners of today's trading networks. Then as now, nations and empires did not restrain cities; they were merely filters for cities' global ambitions... Consider how aggressively Chinese cities have now begun to bypass Beijing as they send delegates en masse to conferences and fairs where they can attract foreign investment.

Perhaps borders don't need to change at all, but rather melt away, so long as locals have access to the nearest big city no matter what "country" it is in. (Urban Region)

Paul Romer's "CharterCities" initiative aims to help poor countries leapfrog into the urban age by embracing an idea much like charter schools: Set aside a plot of land, give it special administrative status and flexibility (as China did in leasing Hong Kong to Britain), and then step out of the way and let experts run it.

Indeed, South Korea's Songdo might well be the most prominent signal that we can -- and perhaps must -- alter the design of life. Cities are where we are most actively experimenting with efforts to save the planet from ourselves. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has brought together mayors from 40 large cities to build a network of best practices for reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions. Vertical Farming (Urban Farming), long in vogue in Tokyo, is spreading to New York; the electric Mass Transit system of Curitiba in Brazil is being copied in North America; Cisco is embedding sensors in Madrid's Street Traffic signals to make the city traffic-free.

From climate change to poverty and inequality, cities are the problem -- and the solution. Getting cities right might mean the difference between a bright future filled with HafenCitys and Songdos -- and a world that looks more like the darkest corners of Karachi and Mumbai.