Читать книгу Global Political Cities - Kent E. Calder - Страница 33

CATALYST FOR THE GLOBAL POLITICAL CITY

Across the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, the nation-state remained dominant in international affairs, sustained by the turbulence of the age and the rapid advance of military technology. An interminable succession of wars in critical parts of the world, centering on Europe and East Asia and using increasingly powerful weapons technology, made human survival, guaranteed by nation-states, the central issue of international relations. The advent of nuclear weapons in 1945 reinforced the rationale of nation-state supremacy for two generations thereafter, consigning cities to continued peripheral status in virtually all dimensions of international affairs.

Despite their marginal standing on the international stage, however, cities across the Cold War years were quietly gaining competitive advantages in addressing global problems that their nation-state competitors lacked. The rising strength of cities was rooted in the enduring power of proximity that they inherently enjoy.¹ While that power has historically been effective over the centuries in manufacturing and commerce, as chapter 2 points out, proximity creates even more potent synergies in service sectors involving the exchange of information. Over the past four decades, cities have been powerfully leveraged by technological, political, and social changes that have given flexible, service-oriented urban configurations unprecedented political-economic potential today. Indeed, a revolution in the quantity, quality, and consequences of international information flows accounts for, more than any other factor, the emergence of the dynamic global political cities that we see today.

As we noted from the outset, cities are an optimally efficient convening spot for thinkers, planners, and entrepreneurs. These social catalysts are most productive when actors can deal directly with one another in a compact physical space, as Edward Glaeser has maintained.² Cities have long been inhibited from fully realizing their residual power of proximity by regulatory and resource constraints. Yet those restrictive bonds are now loosening, even as the “death of distance” resulting from technological changes such as the coming of the internet are simultaneously expanding manyfold the global analytical and leadership potential of cities.³