
Are cities the new countries? - ximeng
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-35305586
======
nkoren
Yes.

Countries were relevant back in the days when territory was the most prized
thing and war was the best means of acquiring it. Countries evolved as a means
of ensuring territorial integrity, via means both explicit (borders enforced
by militaries) and implicit (cultural/linguistic homogeneity, leading to
xenophobia and other such barriers).

But territories are no longer the most prized thing: economies are. And
economies are produced by cities, not countries.[1]

Moreover, the rise of the importance of cities is genuinely a challenge to the
institutions of countries, not something that is merely happening _in
parallel_ to the ongoing importance of countries. This is because the factors
which allow cities to thrive -- internal diversity and external trade -- are
almost diametrically opposed to the factors which allow countries to maintain
their territorial integrity.

Of these two forms of power, I'm betting on cities.

1: [http://www.zompist.com/jacobs.html](http://www.zompist.com/jacobs.html)

~~~
Spearchucker
At some point an administration will need to guarantee supply of sustenance
for the people in their city. It makes sense to me for a city to therefore
still desire territory it controls, for agriculture.

~~~
ogrisel
Cities also consume a lot of energy which primarily produced from oil, coal
and nuclear power that is extracted and transformed outside of cities.

Even if a city would only consume wind and solar, it's quite likely that the
majority of solar panels and wind turbines would be installed outside of the
cities themselves.

~~~
codingdave
And even if a city did produce its own power, where are the materials for all
those panels and turbines coming from? Where is the sand coming from to melt
into glass?

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wj
When I submitted the (exact) same article last night I thought about how this
topic was covered in a book I read titled, Superclass: The Global Power Elite
and the World They Are Making. Part of the premise was that people in some of
the large (and prosperous) cities of the world have more in common with each
other than they might with the many of the people of their own country.

Due to the mobility offered by airlines, the concentration of successful
people going to relatively few universities, and the global reach of their
companies, many New Yorkers might know more people living in London than they
knew living in the majority of U.S. states.

[http://www.amazon.com/Superclass-Global-Power-Elite-
Making/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Superclass-Global-Power-Elite-
Making/dp/0374531617/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=51Rr-
qrkJOL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR100%2C160_&refRID=1QBKGWQ2X1MQXCT4BN26)

Personally I have always felt that people who live in large cities have a much
easier time navigating foreign large cities (even if they don't speak the
language) than people from smaller towns in the same country. Using a subway
for instance.

~~~
Spooky23
That's a great example of the endgame of income inequality will transform the
world.

I find it sad, as that is the cynical world my children will inherit.

~~~
clamprecht
Honest question: Did you believe this before you had children, or did you
realize it afterwards?

~~~
Spooky23
More afterwards. For me, getting acquainted with schools again has made
academic discussion more real.

Also, watching the changes in industries I interact with at work over the last
decade has been eye opening.

------
ajuc
Cities grow by drawing in people from around them. They can exist only thanks
to the unproductive rural regions.

If we separate cities from their region - it just means the money generated in
cities won't be used (among other things) for fixing problems in the
countryside. It's just hiding the externalities.

Also from history I know of at least 3 unifications of small states and it was
beneficial in all cases (at least for the people involved) - see Polish,
German, and Italian unification. Why do we think it's different now?

~~~
toyg
The point is that it's not the XIX century anymore. Telecommunications and
airplanes allow people to literally bypass the countryside and hop from city
to city. Cheap transportation costs mean that markets are distributed and not
as heavily reliant on local expansion as they were. Before, if an industrial
business wanted to expand, doing it locally was the easiest and cheapest
option; that's not true anymore, and in fact it's often counter-productive for
some types of businesses (ones that can get critical mass online but not
necessarily in their own country).

The only real barrier left, IMHO, is linguistic. English works in most cases
but not all, and especially in some European regions there is still a heavy
preference for localized languages.

~~~
ajuc
Better communication is a point against the urbanization if anything? Why cram
millions of people, endure traffic jams and pay outrageous rent when you can
telecommute?

~~~
toyg
A lot of people actually enjoy meeting in meatspace.

------
afsina
I wish we can have real city states as I think they have a lot of advantages
over large-central states. Easier accountability of the governments, easier
mobility and probably less trade restrictions.

~~~
flexie
Funny. I sometimes wish we had a global "state" with general rights to move
freely, vote on global issues etc. Then people could organize in tiny city
states or whatever within the global state.

(now when we are talking fantasies)

~~~
vinceguidry
A state exists primarily to defend its polity against other states. It takes a
lot of resources to maintain a military, accomplish geopolitical objectives,
pursue a coherent foreign policy.

Let's say we found aliens living in the next solar system. That would be the
beginning of the global human state. Even if they're not hostile, humanity as
a whole world need to band together to figure out just what to do about them.

What you're looking for is pan-national governmental institutions. There are
plenty of those.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Isn't that an oxymoron - multiple pan-national states? You're only supposed to
need one.

Anyway, I predict when other people are discovered in another solar system,
then each nation on Earth will attempt to have a relationship with them and it
will be business as usual. Why would America or China agree on the best policy
vs interstellar trade? They agree on so little else!

~~~
vinceguidry
That's why I said it would be the _beginning_ of the new state. It wouldn't
happen overnight. But it's bound to happen.

The fundamental axiom of geopolitics is that when confronted with a threat,
humans consistently identify with the people they are closest to and most
like. Family first, then tribe, village, region, country.

The size of the threat begets a corresponding organizational response. We
don't cooperate all that well with China now, but you can better believe that
if there were a compelling reason to, like, say, aliens in our back yard, we'd
figure it out in a hurry.

------
s_kilk
Interesting. My group of friends seem to routinely come back to the topic of
the UK becoming a federation of city-states.

Seems we're not the only ones thinking that way.

~~~
elthran
Perhaps not a federation of city states, but I would definitely be in favour
of a federation of England/Scotland/Wales/NI/Dependencies - perhaps even with
London as a separate federal part

~~~
s_kilk
Certainly, that alone would be a move in the right direction.

> London as a separate federal part

Not the first time I've heard the suggestion of ejecting London from the Union
:)

~~~
nkoren
My first real introduction to UK politics was listening to an only mildly
tipsy ex-London mayor rant about how if he could, he'd gladly "pay the rest of
the UK £10 billion to go fuck itself, and get us towed out into the mid-
Atlantic and declared an independent city state."

This impressed me on several levels. :-)

~~~
arethuza
Boris Johnson then?

~~~
nkoren
Nope.

~~~
arethuza
Was it a Mayor or a Lord Mayor?

~~~
nkoren
An ex-mayor, and not a Lord Mayor. Really small search space here. :-)

------
vlehto
Country is essentially a political tool. Historically borders have been drawn
so that tax collection and defense is easy. There is no reason to assume
anything else for the future.

With rising costs of defense tech and automation allowing small crews, defense
is about money. Tax money to be specific.

Bitcoin is making money transactions difficult to follow. International
banking and tax havens are also a thing. Either we are going to see private
armies and private countries, or countries shift taxation away from income and
transactions. And start to tax something more traceable.

Location is prized and traceable. Water, electricity, internet bandwidth,
everything that moves through fixed cable is also good candidate. Then comes
traffic. If we rely on liquid fuels, road traffic could be taxed without
tracing. But planes and ships are probably going to see some tax
entering/exiting a port.

The article seems to be right for the wrong reasons. Country formation is
usually very Machiavellian business.

------
legulere
The problem is that cities are very dependent on the land around them: Water,
Food, natural Resources.

------
ekianjo
> "When we talk about countries, it's often about what separates us, language
> and culture. But when you talk about cities, we face very similar
> challenges."

Yeah, and big consumer companies (FMCG and the like) have already noticed that
for a while and approach regional markets with high density populations the
same way - they are are indeed many more shared needs than differences. Once
you go out of the metropolitan areas, however, you see way more differences
driven by local cultures.

------
wink
Maybe they have a lot in common with other big cities, but I'm not sure it's
accounting for more than other factors.

Anecdotal example: When talking to people from other countries (but same
professional background and income bracket, tech conferences for me
specifically) the differences are often very visible and also major than
talking to someone from the countryside. Sure, there's always stuff that's
different (and the ribbing under friends and colleagues of "quality of
life/size of your house" versus "only 30mins to work instad of 60+/small
apartment" never gets old - at least here in Germany)

So yes - for exactly the topics mentioned: transportation, housing, etc it's
absolutely true - but not necessarily for most aspects of life.

------
ommunist
There already was a page in the world history when struggle between cities was
more important than power play between countries. Genova vs Venice was way
more important for Europe and the Midfle East than London vs Paris in its
time.

------
djaychela
There was a portion of a recent TED Radio Hour which referenced this:

[http://www.npr.org/2016/01/08/462281067/how-are-mayors-
bette...](http://www.npr.org/2016/01/08/462281067/how-are-mayors-better-
poised-to-get-things-done)

------
transfire
Someone should draw a map of the U.S. if city-states were to rise to power.

~~~
nkoren
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_States#/media/File:MapofEmergingUSMegaregions.png)

~~~
flubert
Interesting, but linking Seattle, Boise, and the Tri-cities into one mega-
region seems to decrease the seriousness of the concept to me.

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nvahalik
Anyone else think of franchises when they read this title?

