Virus and Antibody

New York - Still number 1 in Foreign Policy's 2010 Ranking

At Schiphol Airport, on my way from Amsterdam to New York, my eye was drawn to Foreign Policy , the magazine on global politics, economics and ideas. On its cover a massive public housing complex in Hong Kong and the heading “METROPOLIS NOW – half the world already living in cities. Is that a good thing?”. Next to it, the front page of strategy+business read “BUILDING GREENER CITIES” and termed cities “the last best hope for combating climate change”.

To me both magazines not known for their focus on urban development and climate change, and I tend to see their focus on city and climate change, as a trend. It is similar to the interest of companies like Philips, IBM and Siemens in the city, and confirms that cities are increasingly recognized as important objects for addressing climate change.

Strategy+business (Autumn 2010) is published by Booz & Company, a global management consulting firm headquartered in New York. Nick Pennell, Sartaz Ahmed of Booz & Company and Stefan Henningsson of WWF, wrote its main feature article “Reinventing the City to Combat Climate Change”. Its central statement is that how the world’s cities develop their infrastructure will determine the future path of global warming. The article argues that the $350 trillion that the world’s cities will spend on infrastructure in the coming 30 years are the most efficient if spent on reducing lifetime operation costs and improving sustainability. The article gives an overview of emerging innovative practices and concludes that successful practices towards low-carbon cities mostly view these practices “through a lens of livability, finding synergies between initiatives that promote quality of life and ecological and economic health”.

Foreign Policy (September/October 2010) has less of a climate focus – it discusses the urbanization challenges that China, India and other regions are facing. The “Prime Numbers” that the magazine gives are staggering: in terms of floor space needed, China has to build ten New Yorks over the next 20 years and India four. Energy, traffic, education and housing will require huge investments in both countries.

Dubbed “Chicago on the Yantze”, the magazine paints a picture of Chongquing, for me rightly called ‘the biggest city you’ve never heard of’: 32 million and counting. The magazine also includes an article by Joel Kotkin, the author of “The Next 100 Million – America in 2050”. He counterbalances the talk about cities, and argues “suburbs, not cities are the answer”. He seems a bit too keen to argue against the city, and statements that “Ancient Athens and Rome didn’t start out as undiscovered artist neighborhoods” are not necessarily convincing. But I’ll postpone that analysis until I finished reading his book. I do think he has a point – there are a lot of ‘non-city suburbs’, they play an important role in the geography of America, and enhancing the sustainability of these areas is a key challenge in the US.

“Beyond City Limits”, the article by Parag Khanna in Foreign Policy to me was the most radical. He compares the independence of contemporary cities with the late Middle Ages, when Arab, Muslim and Chinese cities flourished in independence. He terms Dubai and other regional port centers as ‘the Venices of the 21^st century’, and refers to the Hanseatic League along the Baltic Sea as an early example of city collaboration. He argues that cities will take increasingly independent positions, and that cities are the true daily test of whether we can build a better future. Khanna concludes that what happens in our cities, simply put, matters more than what happens anywhere else: “They are both the cancer and the foundation of our networked world, both virus and antibody. 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”.