The Great Powers and Urbanization Project—a joint initiative of the University of Pennsylvania's Perry World House, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the University of Melbourne's Connected Cities Lab, the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), the Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI), and the African Centre for Cities—brings together research and policy development at the intersection of global urbanizations and geopolitics. As I wrote for the Diplomatic Courier at the launch, “The return of great power politics and continuing urbanization are not separate phenomena. Cities have become the economic engines and sites of innovation for nation-states, as well as targets for surveillance and cyber-attacks for national governments. Successful powers in the twenty-first century will build stable and innovative cities at home while projecting influence, and at times military strength, in urban settings abroad.”
The first workshop, “Cities, Geopolitics and International Legal Order” was convened by Perry Wold House. The second workshop, “Cities in Global and Regional Governance: from Multilateralism to Multistakeholderism?” was hosted by CIDOB. Findings and summaries that emerged from, or as part of, both sessions can be found here and here. Meanwhile, the Great Powers and Urbanization Channel at the Diplomatic Courier has featured a series of essays from participants, offering a one stop shop for national security officials and urbanists alike trying to navigate global challenges in an urban world.
On March 16th, the Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI), the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the Diplomatic Courier hosted a third workshop, the webinar on the “Cities and Great Powers” with a particular focus on Latin America.
