On one of his swings past London this week, I had the pleasure of hosting Parag Kanna for an evening ULI session at AECOM.  Parag, with his ever-roving attention, is finishing up a new book centred on the emerging dynamics of South-East Asia.

But during this particular presentation and the lively discussion that followed, we focused on how globalism and diversity are colliding with protectionism and solidarity, and tried to address a few questions:

• How are these colliding themes influencing the planning of regions and cities?
• Will devolution create fragmented worlds or give rise to new, broader regions?
• Will the governance of nations and cities become more or less democratic as a result?

Parag outlined three ideas that underpinned the discussion:

“The 2^nd Law of (Geopolitical) Thermodynamics’: maximum entropy.”

• Absent global events that create social aggregations, democracy fuels devolution movements.
• g. Scotland, Catalunya, Veneto
• In many ways, we are still feeling the long-running effects of decolonization.

“Devolution contributes to peace.”

• Some polities grow apart in order to stay together.
• g. India, Nigeria, Myanmar, Indonesia.
• Separated tribes are smaller, and reduce international conflict.

“Tribalism is a path to globalism”

• Devolved political tribes are too small to survive.
• Eventually they seek to re-aggregate with other transnational entities.
• g. EU, Pax Americana, Indica, Aseana

Parag noted that infrastructure is increasingly a more powerful authority than conventional political government; cross border infrastructure (e.g. continental gas networks , transport) reshapes cross-border relations.  Connectivity makes it difficult to maintain monopolies because producer leverage becomes increasingly limited.

While the raging culture wars remain distracting, the world is remapping itself as functional geographies – connectivity and flow is becoming more important than conventional political territory, even after the relative constrictions after the Western financial crisis.  (Note: I later had some side-chatter with Parag about data points related to global flows, and he steered me to this interesting McKinsey report: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/global-flows-in-a-digital-age)

As nations devolve into urban regions, these mega-cities and their related urban corridors do create inequalities with their hinterlands. But they also continue to absorb population on a global basis, agglomerating the vast majority of talent, innovation, and investment.  And we already know that rates of urbanization are already the most accurate proxy for determining electoral results.

The mega-cities, connected to global flows, create foundations for new forms of governance appropriate to the era (a gradual evolution from the 19^th-century ‘Nation State’, the Cold War ‘Garrison State’, the globalised ‘Market State’, and the industry-cluster-based ‘Region State’.)  We are now – formally and informally – developing the emerging ‘Info-State’, which in turn creates a new range of characteristics related to geographic scale, technology strategy, and diplomatic style.  Parag described how we might build ‘ the most boring but effective government’: the hybrid ‘Direct Technocracy’ – something in between the ‘Direct Democracy’ of Switzerland and the ‘Technocracy’ of Singapore.

In the end, if we want to get these emerging cities right, especially in cultures that have democratic traditions and expectations, we need not only to have the ability to input into government, but also for the government to perform, for us to reliably receive related outputs.  The ‘Info-State’, with its data-driven scenario analysis, real-time public consultation, and crowd sourcing of ideas’ is perhaps best placed to satisfy these expectations.

Words by Christopher Choa, ULI UK Chair