Cities are the Future of the Liberal International Order
Most analysts have responded to nationalism, economic frustration, and the erosion of the international liberal order by focusing on nation states and supranational bodies: their instruments, alliances, and behaviors, and their role in either strengthening or undermining the multilateral system.
The role of cities has been largely neglected.
This blind-spot undermines our ability to understand the complex dynamics of contemporary politics and economics. It also limits our capacity to address the challenges of the international order, from climate change to inequality to the refugee crisis. None of those challenges can be solved without cities.
Cities are globally responsible actors
Take, for instance, climate change — the issue where there is the greatest need for international cooperation. While nation states negotiated the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, a thousand mayors met in parallel at the Climate Summit for Local Leaders to pledge support for a transition towards one hundred percent renewable energy.
As President Trump threatens to turn his back on the Paris Agreement (which risks weakening international resolve beyond the United States) seventy-one U.S. mayors — both Democrat and Republican — addressed a letter to the newly elected president to ask him to embrace the Paris Agreement, concluding that they were “prepared to forge ahead even in the absence of federal support.”
Even if the Trump Administration refrains from withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, it is safe to assume that U.S. local governments will play an active leadership role on the climate agenda. Cities are already turning their promises into action. Aspen, Colorado; Greensburg, Texas; and Burlington, Vermont have already achieved one hundred-percent renewable energy. There are twenty three other U.S. cities well on their way, from Rochester, Minnesota to San Diego, California.
There are also similar examples beyond the United States. The recent merger between the Compact of Mayors and the EU Covenant of Mayors, forming the Global Covenant of Mayors, is the largest and first of its kind, with over 7000 cities across the world committed to fighting climate change together.
Cities are home to more than fifty percent of the world’s population, consume more than two thirds of the world’s energy, and emit more than eighty percent of CO2 emissions.
Public officials and local leaders see the energy transition as a practical decision. Cities are home to more than fifty percent of the world’s population, consume more than two thirds of the world’s energy, and emit more than eighty percent of CO2 emissions. Most are already exposed to climate change and disaster risk. Three in five urban areas are coastal, putting them at great risk as sea levels rise and storm surges increase.
Cities are a magnet for economic growth
Cities also play a crucial role in the economic challenges facing the liberal international order. Sixty percent of global GDP is concentrated in six hundred urban centers. The traditional way of viewing the world as an agglomeration of national economies no longer applies in assessing the drivers for economic growth. The natural unit of macroeconomic analysis should be the city and its surrounding region (an argument most famously made by Jane Jacobs). In today’s global economy, cities are reinvigorating regions, creating jobs and reinventing themselves.
In The Smartest Places on Earth, Van Agtmael and Bakker illustrate how successful cities combine their assets — specialist knowledge, educational institutions, appealing work and living environments — with advanced technology, manufacturing, and sharing brainpower. Eindhoven, a former rustbelt city, is known today for being a center for high tech. Many other cities — Akron, Lund, Batesville, Austin, Raleigh and Oulu among them — have been similarly creative.
We need to ensure urban systems are equipped with the necessary tools to accelerate economic activity in a way that benefits everybody in society.
As we move forward, we need to ensure urban systems are equipped with the necessary tools to accelerate economic activity in a way that benefits everybody in society. My colleague Geraldine Gardner’s analysis of the Brexit vote is a perfect case study for why this is so important. As cities and regions transition from the industrial to the knowledge economy, individuals struggle for job security and socio-economic status, leading to anxiety and tension within communities.
We need to implement policies that boost cities’ abilities to compete, while helping former industry towns pivot. This means focusing on education, addressing wage inequality, and investing in job training to ensure that workers have the right skills for the advanced manufacturing and automation era.
The migratory dynamic is urban
Across the West, immigration and the refugee crisis have been lightening rods for political debate. Here too cities are critical. Of the twenty one million refugees in the world today, two thirds live in urban areas. As nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment grow, cities have tended to take the opposite view, proactively building safe havens for migrants and refugees.
In Poland, a country where xenophobia is increasingly rife, the Gdansk city council voted unanimously to welcome refugees. Gdansk’s mayor has established an alliance with two other Polish cities, Wrocław and Wałbrzych, to cooperate on openness and intercultural dialogue. In Belgium, the mayor of Mechelen won the World Mayor Prize in 2016 for his work on integrating immigrants. In the United States, the mayors of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, to name a few, worked to reassure undocumented immigrants that their cities would remain safe havens against federal deportation actions.
Nonetheless, there is only so much protection that these sanctuary cities can offer. Solutions will require strengthened cooperation between the international, national, and local level. Cities are on the front line of the political, economic, and security consequences of the refugee crisis, yet both global policymaking and financial flows are disconnected from the crucial role that cities play in integration.
Making space for cities in the liberal international order
Cities are core to solving the social, economic and environmental challenges we face today. While the international system has changed over time to accommodate global power shifts, we have not yet given cities the role in the liberal order that they deserve.
The urban turn of the world is inevitable.
The urban turn of the world is inevitable, a trend explained succinctly in Simon Curtis’ Cities in a Global Order. In the complex, interconnected and changing global environment in which we live, nation states are not only compelled to transfer elements of their sovereignty and territorial integrity to international institutions. They also need to recognize the new prominence of cities as international actors. If we ignore the forces at play at the urban level, we will further fuel social tensions, political divisions, and the continued weakening of international liberalism, global cooperation, and economic prosperity.
