In order to gain his unique insight on the past, present and future of our cities and their role in world affairs, URBAN HUB spoke with renowned expert Dr. Parag Khanna. Khanna is a global strategist, best-selling author and sought-after expert on the topics of urbanization, globalization and international affairs.
Cities make the world go round
At the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona on 19 November 2014, Parag Khanna gave a keynote speech on on “The Future of Globalization”. URBAN HUB sat down with him to talk about his presentation, but also to hear more of what he had to say about the future of cities and urbanization.
Khanna’s goal in his talk in Barcelona was to “put the evolution of cities into their historic context as the central anchors and diplomatic players of the world today.” He explained how, over the past 1,000 years, it was cities that remained the driving force of international trade over five major stages of globalization – from the trade routes of the Orient to today’s hyperconnected world.
So what is meant by “Total Globalization” in the timeline above? One has to look back to the 1980s and 1990s when the world was dominated by the USA, followed by other powers such as Europe, China, India and Japan – the markets that mattered.
Today, according to Khanna, we have such a strong global technology and communications network that “every market matters”.
From the unipolar 1990s to today’s geopolitical marketplace
Do closer links mean the end of wars?
Parag pointed out that, while governments do spend a lot on defense, they put much more money into improving our global infrastructure, which includes spending on telecommunications, transportation and international supply chains. This infrastructure represents a huge investment that nations will not want to jeopardize for something so trivial as war.
What governments will do, however, is to play a sort of “tug of war” for greater control over the supply chain. This may result in some aggressive maneuvering by politicians and businessmen, but that is certainly a favorable alternative to war.
“A city can be successful in a failed state, but there is no viable country without a viable city.”
Dr. Parag Khanna
Managing Partner, Hybrid Reality
Some highlights from Parag Khanna’s résumé:
Managing Partner of Hybrid Reality Pte Ltd
CEO of Factotum
Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation
Adjunct Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore
Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS
Senior Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations
Senior Fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs
Co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012)
Author of The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008)
Author of How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011)
Cities take the reins from the superpowers
With rising populations and incredible diversity, cities will become even greater driving forces of globalization and international city-to-city diplomacy or “diplomacity”, as Parag Khanna calls it.
In our increasingly urban world, Khanna stresses that countries need heads of state that know how to run cities – and the world already has ten national premiers who used to be mayors.
In many areas, cities have converged into “urban archipelagos”, and it’s hard to tell where one stops and the other begins. The economic weight of these megalopolises is massive – in fact, some are more internationally significant than many countries. China’s Pearl River Delta, as Khanna notes, would be a member of the G20 if it were an independent country.
China can be broken down into about 22 megacity clusters, each with its own characteristics and, often, unique legislation. Many cities around the world have their own so-called “special economic zones” with laws that differ, sometimes substantially, from national legislation – with a level of independence approaching that of a city-state.
New global power clusters: urban archipelagos
The smart city redefined
In order for these critically important cities to be sustainable, Khanna emphasizes they must be substantially populated (min. 1 million) and economically diversified. Detroit, for example, was too focused on manufacturing, and offshoring basically brought it to ruin. China’s Dongguan, on the other hand, had a large enough population and services sector, as well as government aid, which allowed it to quickly rebound from the recent financial crisis.
Khanna suggests that the definition of a smart city needs rethinking. He believes that smart cities should meet the criteria of a minimum population threshold and economic diversification. If smart cities don’t meet these requirements, they cannot achieve long-term sustainability. And that’s not smart.
Watch Khanna’s talk at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona on the past, present and future of globalization and learn how cities have always paved the way to a more connected world.
Keynote speech at the Smart City Expo World Congress 2014
Parag Khanna’s thoughts on urbanization and smart cities
With such an acclaimed expert on hand, it seemed the opportune moment to dive deeper into the topic of urbanization. Read some of the most inspiring excerpts from URBAN HUB’s interview with Parag Khanna:
URBAN HUB (UH): In terms of urban mobility, what do you expect to see in modern cities over the next 10 to 15 years?
Parag Khanna (PK): “Mobility is crucial. The discourse surrounding mobility and smartness that began with things like bus rapid transit, ride sharing, congestion pricing, and so forth has evolved very quickly into driverless cars and other sorts of very high-tech, zero emissions electric car sharing schemes, as well as last-mile, multi-modal transportation systems.
All of these are obviously very sophisticated, and cities such as Paris, Berlin, and other places – which are front and center in experimenting with some of these technologies – are obviously to be commended because such initiatives require very high up-front capital investments in order to develop the infrastructure for smart and efficient multi-modal transportation options.
So in Helsinki, Finland, for example, young people are no longer buying cars because the public transportation is very good. In Singapore, they have decided to move forward with a Google driverless car test bed in one district. So there’s a lot of experimenting going on around the future of urban mobility that I think is very laudable, and so, 10 to 15 years from now, it could very well be that in some cities you’ll have a very highly advanced shared and driverless or piloted public transportation system.”
UH: What advice would you give to future urban planners, engineers and architects?
UH: What do you expect for the future of our urban centers?
UH: How can cities attract and support skilled young people?
UH: What does globalization and “diplomacity” mean for our democratic processes?
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