Dr Beyza Unal
Alright? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chatham House. My name’s Beyza Unal. I’m a Research Fellow in the International Security Department here at Chatham House. I lead the project on urban resilience and city preparedness basically, but my background is on nuclear weapons policies, as well as on cyber policy. I’ll be acting as a contributing Chair for today’s programme. Now, you might ask what the hell a contributing Chair is? It means that you’re going to hear me talking and you’re going to hear me talking a lot, which is generally a good thing, not a bad thing. Before the discussion starts, let me make a few important remarks. The event will be on the record. You can comment the Twitter, #Chatham – CHevents, please put your phones on silent mode and in case of emergency or technical difficulty, Chatham House staff will be in the room, normally standing at the back of the side of the room.
At this event, we’re going to discuss the power and influence of cities, while tackling global challenges. We will look at cities’ role in foreign policymaking and discuss what any such foreign policy would look like in the future. Cities today are at the forefront of pressing challenges. They play a major role, for instance, in the climate change discussions, for that sake, I think, the C40’s blog sums it up all, ending climate change starts in the city. This is, I think, true for all issue areas.
Today’s security challenges are diverse and there’s an increasing need for cities to incorporate solutions at the local level, perhaps even without waiting for the action at the national level. In the near future, this demand is going to – is likely to increase as technology advances. In fact, today, local authorities are increasingly, at the forefront of solving problems. The Ebola outbreak in Lagos, for instance, was contained rapidly – relatively rapidly, due to previous experience in polio and successful city level management.
The international organisations realised the importance of cities and they incorporated the city level analysis into their framework as well. The World Bank, for instance, has a sustainable cities programme. The United Nations sustainable development goals, for instance, if you look at it, one of them says it involves inclusive, safe, resilient, sustainable cities. OACD had done the same thing and WHO actually, has a Healthy Cities network, aiming to create a network of health experts within and across cities.
Now, the types of relationship between residents with their elected Government may actually be the way forward in shaping foreign policy decisions of the future. This takes me to today’s topic, can global cities have their own foreign policy and, if so, what would that policy look like? I have two exceptional speakers here with me. In the speaking order we have Ivo Daalder, who is the President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Previously, he served as the Permanent Representative to NATO, from United States. Mr Daalder also served on President Clinton’s National Security Council staff as Director for European Affairs. Our second speaker is Michele Acuto, who’s a Professor of Global Urban Politics at the Melbourne School of Design in University of Melbourne. He was previously the Director of the City Leadership Initiative at University College London. He’s also the Adviser at the World Health Organisation. Now, without further ado, I would like to give the floor to Mr Daalder to start first and then we will go with Michele, thank you.
Ivo H. Daalder
Great, thanks so much, both for the kind introduction and for having me here in Chatham House, it’s great to be back in London, although, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about the role of cities in foreign policy at Chatham House, so that’s new. And the question is really why? Why is someone who, like me, who’s spent a good part, in fact, all of his career, in the traditional foreign policy world, like you, I wrote my dissertation on nuclear weapons and NATO, this is stuff I like to spend a lot of time on, why start thinking about cities? And the reason is twofold: one, there’s an old dictum that Graham Allison wrote an entire book and, in fact, has an entire career on, which is what you see depends on where you sit, which is the core aspect of Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision. And when you sit in Chicago, you have a different view of the world than when you sit in Washington or Brussels or London. Why?
Chicago is a unique city in the United States. It is one of the great cities that is neither a political nor a financial capital. In fact, it’s one of the very few great global cities that is neither a political nor a financial capital. Los Angeles is another one, but it’s rare to find cities like that and yet, Chicago has an interest in what’s happening, not only in the city, but in the region, in the nation and in the world, it is affected by and, in turn, affects what is happening in the rest of the world.
So, when I came to Chicago it was an interest, including by the Mayor, who was, at that time, a new Mayor, a man named Rahm Emanuel, who was the Chief of Staff to President Obama, to think about how does this city think globally? Not is it – not only is how is the city global, but how does the city think globally? How does a city act globally? And that led me to start thinking about, not only about cities, not just as places to live, really well, by the way, in places like London and Chicago, for many, but not for everyone, but also, how cities can be actors on the global stage. And if you look at what’s happened in our international politics and the Political Scientists, so I think about those in those terms, but if you are an Economist and you think about what’s happening in the global economy, the growth of globalisation has led to a diffusion of power. A diffusion of power not only among states, but away from states to other actors, corporate actors, terrorist networks, crime syndicates and, indeed, cities have become actors on the global stage. They can affect change. They can work together with each other, either, hopefully, in concert with the nations of which they are a part or, at times, at cross purposes.
And so, the question is, how do you harness the power that is in cities? How do you strategise as a city, not just about what you do internally to the city, but use the power that you have in order to have an impact externally? And we sat around and brought together leaders of a whole variety of different aspects that make up a city, commercial leaders, civic leaders, cultural leaders, education leaders, to say how do you bring the resources of a city to bear in a strategic way about how to engage in the world?
So, a year ago, we published a report on Chicago’s global strategy, for how does Chicago engage the world and how does it benefit Chicago by engaging in the world? Again, not necessarily in opposition to states, but alongside or, at least, to express its own interest in states. And the clear moment when it became evident that cities are actors, for a city like Chicago, came early June of 2017 when President Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden and announced at the United States that he was elected by the people of Pittsburgh, but not the people of Paris, as he put it, and that he was going to put the people of Pittsburgh first and withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. And the reaction to that decision was to say, “You may want to make that decision, but we’re not going to go along,” and the ‘we’ not going to go along were corporate leaders in the United States, state leaders, California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, and city leaders, including the city of Chicago. And they came together and said, “We are going to implement our pledge and we are going to communicate to the United Nations that America will meet its obligations.” It’s called America’s Pledge, and each city and state and corporation set, for itself, a set of goals to start implementing it. So, we hosted, we, the City of Chicago, hosted a meeting of North American Mayors at the end of December, where we agreed on a climate charter where each state set, for itself, a goal that it needs to meet in order for all of us, together, to meet the climate objectives.
In this case we were against the state, against the United States, but in favour of an obligation that the United States had freely entered into not long before. So, thinking through how cities can strategize internally and strategize co-operatively with other cities and other actors is extraordinarily important for figuring out how we’re going to – how the world is going to be run in a different way. We can no longer afford to say let’s just go to Washington or Berlin or Tokyo and, in fact, cities, by the way, all of them, and only talk to the people who don’t have anything to do with what the people in Washington and Berlin and Tokyo do, we now need to talk to city leaders too. And the challenge for city leaders, whether it’s Sadiq Khan or Rahm Emanuel or Eric Garcetti or who have you, Patricia de Lille in Cape Town, is how do we take the resources we have in the city, combine them, in order for us to be more effective actors on the global stage?
That is, I think, a, and Michele and others have been working on this for quite a long time, that is a fruitful avenue for us to research, to develop. And, particularly, the last point, as we live in the, kind of, political climates that I live in the United States and people here in Britain live with depolarisation and, indeed, deep paralysis because of that polarisation, we are going to increase and look at actors who are not affected by that paralysis, in part, because when you’re a Mayor, you’ve got to get stuff done, otherwise you’re not a Mayor very long.
In Chicago that means filling potholes and moving snow. By the way, we just had our big snowstorm and we moved the snow, so that traffic could flow, and if you don’t do that you’re not Mayor for very long. That practicality gives you an ability to think more practically about how you get stuff done, as opposed to sitting around, which is what natural Governments start doing about how we can stop each other from doing anything, which is what Washington, these days, is all too frequently, all about.
Dr Beyza Unal
Amazing, thank you very much. So, I’ll now turn to Michele, I think you’re going to talk more about the city networks, as well as the practical implications.
Michele Acuto
And spoiler here, we basically, never disagree and, in fact, we work together, and we’ve just put out a report, from the Chicago Council, on city diplomacy, so this is not going to be a debate. I’m very happy to have debates with the audience as much as possible. I guess, yeah, where I thought I’d start with this, just to, sort of, provoke a bit of discussion, is to start a bit from the numbers and from the evidence at hand and what does this type of story look like, from the city perspective? And, in fact, the work that we’ve been doing, with the Chicago Council on city diplomacy, has been prompted by a piece of work that is out and has been done by UCL and the University of Melbourne, on the size and the landscape of city networking. And if you count, even just the formalised partnerships of cities or city networks that are doing things globally, you get pretty sizeable numbers.
There’s at least 200 city networks currently operating internationally, at least 80 new ones, since 2000, give or take 70% of cities do engage in constructing and developing international strategies and, equally, at least 88% of cities do so by relating to and working with city networks. This is not just a London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Chicago type story, so the membership of that type of city diplomacy and city network initiatives counts, at least, in the 11,000s, in the sense that it is, yes, London and New York, Barcelona, Helsinki, for instance, the most networked, formally networked, cities, when it comes to these, type of things. But, in fact, it is even the likes of, with no offence intended, by the way, Durban or Bristol, Canberra or Chiang Mai in – just next to Bangkok, in a sense, that are engaging in these, type of things.
So, first of all, this is not just a big city story. Second of all, it’s extensive and it isn’t – it is very visible when you relate it to the climate examples, for instance, the C40 Climate Leadership Group, Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities working on resilience, equally, Local Government for sustainability. But the range of things that cities do internationally in city diplomacy is extensive, in fact, the majority of city networks focus on governance.
There’s extensive initiatives on gender, there’s extensive initiatives on culture, so the story is much more complicated, and it is critical to look at numbers. So, we were just discussing, just before this, doing this just on the basis of little stories or convenient anecdotes gets us just so far. Policy needs to be based on evidence and the evidence is that this is increasing. The evidence is that whilst this is increasing, cities, themselves, are not, for instance, conducting extensive training in negotiation or diplomacy or international engagement. Typically, this is very often left to the Office of the Executive or the Mayor. Most networks, in fact, relate to the Office and the Executives and therein, lies a problem, in the sense that, in fact, city diplomacy, and it’s a clunky term, makes me think of, again, with respect, an Ambassador, but it isn’t just an Ambassadorial role that we’re trying to evoke when we talk about city diplomacy, providers of the responsibility the Local Government Officers have when they relate to other political constituencies, countries, cities, international organisations.
So, in fact, the most common forms of city diplomacy are carried out by environmental planning, even Waste Management Officers, that have to relate to, for instance, large corporate giants that require deals that do relate to other cities internationally. 60% of city networks globally produce joint reports. 30% of city networks globally produce joint policies. These are joint, for instance, by retrofit systems that three cities, in the global South, three in the global North, of completely different sizes, try, together, to retrofit their bus fleet. Those are really tangible things and they’re not necessarily just a question of Mayors having fancy events and canapés but, in fact, actually, Local Government Officers representing their citizens overseas, and even domestically, if you think of the example City Deals here in the UK or in Australia at the moment, and it is a really different story. And the story is that the capacity is limited, at the moment. We, sort of, we were estimating that about 1% of cities’ budgets, even when you go sort of, of large cities, goes into these type of activities, there’s limited training and, at the same time, the story is shifting quite a bit.
An important – quite important story there, for instance, is the role of the private sector and philanthropy is inspiring a new type of city diplomacy, a new type of networks and, in fact, mentioning Rockefeller 100 as an example, a one million investment per 100 cities in creating a new structure of governance for resilience of cities, so at least 100 million just there, plus operational, that budget.
Large networks, like C40, that have the backing of Bloomberg philanthropies, [inaudible – 18:31]. So private sector interest funding support, and no judgement passed, at least upfront, I’m happy to debate on that, is swaying the way this is working and, at the same time, this has strong, practical implications for cities.
The IPCC has just recognised the importance of cities. There’s a conference called Cities IPCC shortly in Edmonton. There’s a whole part of the IPCC and the Climate Change Assessment dedicated to cities that were recognising the Paris Agreement as key partners to the implementation of Paris, enhancing, for instance, the Mayor of Pittsburgh saying, “Well, I don’t care what the White House says, we’ll take this forward.” Same thing on disaster risk reduction, same thing on health, WHO moving on a declaration, and it’s called the Shanghai Consensus, that says as cities, not just as countries, we want to push forward the Sustainable Development Goals agenda and do it in cities. San Francisco adopting, and many other cities adopting, CEDAW, the Convention Against the Discrimination for Women.
Those, sort of thing are not just gestures, I guess. What I’m trying to point out here is that they have tangible implications in policy. They have tangible implications in cities, claiming some form of international personality and, I guess, where words steer the conversation is, this is being recognised in some form and by some within the international system. First of all, by philanthropists, first of all, by regional organisations, Europe, certainly the European Union has been one of the front-runners in this type of recognition and by end of the month for reform of the UN system. And the Secretary General did welcome – a number of us were on a high-level consultation for the Secretary General on the urban reform, in a sense, of the United Nations and there were proposals and there are proposals on the table, like the construction of a UN urban agency, like the development of an intergovernmental panel, like the IPCC, but focus on urban change. And, more importantly, a conversation about how do you recognise Local Government within the machinery of international relations, especially if it is still fundamentally state-based? And what’s happening there, quite interestingly, is that when you look, again, back to the cities and the, sort of, cities that we’ve been engaging with, it is a shift in mentality, that international or city diplomacy was about twinning or was about business ventures and raising capital and it is still very much about that, but it is also switching to, sort of, foreign policy, as in a sense of a public policy response, feel the need to go international.
Now, that’s a quite fundamental shift in thinking, it isn’t just about the partnerships. It is about delivering local initiatives, on the basis of international agreements, treaties and movements. So, I guess, what I would flag there is, structurally and politically that makes quite a substantial difference to actually the way cities operate on a daily basis, and it does make a difference as to how they pick up the trash in front of your house in the morning or you pick up a bus in the afternoon.
Dr Beyza Unal
Thank you very much. Thank you, Michele. I think we did a good start with the discussion and now, I’m going to open up the floor for questions from the audience. While you’re thinking about your question, first, I think I would like to address one question from the Chair and then I promise I’ll try to stop talking. Now, last week, I was in an event, which was under the Chatham House Rules, so I can’t reveal the names or the things, but then, one speaker actually said something really interesting. He said that “If you’re in an event and if you don’t know anything about the answer to a question, basically, you just need to say, “Yes, yes, that’s a really good question, but everything is different in the South, don’t you think?”” And like – and he said, “You can do that in a dinner as well and it almost always works.” And, today, when I was coming here, I was thinking about this and I thought, well, actually, yes, things are different in the Global South when you look at the cities as well. So, my question, I think, goes to both of the speakers, is that how can we actually – what is the starting point to get the Global South into the discussion of foreign policy thinking, especially at the city level, of course, when things are not as good a starting point as Global North? Should I start with you, Ivo?
Ivo H. Daalder
Sure, and it’s a really important question and not only is it an important question, we’d better get the answer right, because here’s what’s happening. In the Global South, if you want to use that term, is – that’s where urbanisation is taking place at a pace that we have never seen before in history. The current pace of urbanisation, the growth of people, either moving into or being born into cities, is equivalent to a London-sized city every two and a half weeks. Eight million people plus are moving into or are being born into cities around the world every two and a half weeks. That gives you a sense of the scope of change. By 2050, the ten largest cities in the world will not be in – there will only be one in North America and there will be zero in Europe and they will be in Africa and in South Asia, including parts of China.
So, we’re building cities at an extraordinarily rapid rate and we can either build them right, in which case they are sustainable, and people can have an opportunity to thrive economically, socially, educationally, culturally, or we can build them wrong, and people will not thrive economically and socially and culturally and educationally, and people who don’t thrive economically, sociably, culturally and educationally, tend to get angry. And angry people and big masses tend to create problems: violence, large-scale migration, you name it.
If a city in Africa, that grows from its current level of, say, ten million to its future level of 40 million, decides that it’s going to power that city with coal, the outcome for climate change is going to be rather different than if it is natural gas or, better still, renewable resources. So, this issue of how cities think about their development is a foreign policy challenge for them. It is the network, it’s not states who are going to tell them how to do this. It’s certainly not the UN system, which ignores them, that is going to tell them we’re going to do it. It’s going to be these networks. It is how do you challenge? How do you solve this problem? How do you deal with this issue? You deal with security and the bio threat to cities.
We learn from what happened in the Ebola crisis or a pandemic outbreak in Hong Kong, like SARS, and we bring that expertise together, and through the network city-to-city, so that it is, in this case, more than almost any other case I can think of, in the North’s fundamental interest, the cities in the North, which is where people live, 80 plus percent of the North is urbanised, to get the South urbanisation right, and because if we get it wrong, it doesn’t stay in the South, it’ll be part of our entire mast, and it’s a big challenge. So, getting urbanisation right and, by the way, I don’t think we’ve gotten it right, just go to Beijing, in terms of when you weren’t thinking about these kinds of questions, now, of course, in Beijing they are thinking about these issues, so we can learn from what’s happening in Beijing. So, having these networks and having this capability, where we can learn from each other is, kind of, fundamental to getting the South right.
Dr Beyza Unal
Amazing. Michele, would you like to add any point, or…?
Michele Acuto
And just the quick point on that is that I would take it even further and say, actually, there is, in the South, we have some of the best examples of this and does the, sort of, fundamental assumption that the Northern or Western models are the effective ones? Not at all. First of all, Latin America has an extensive experience of this. In fact, the municipality and Municipal Government in Rio is probably one of the first ones that put together solid and well thought International Diplomacy Office, with a Chief Diplomat. And, in fact, Rio was in charge of this before the Climate Leadership Group for quite some time, quite effectively. Mexico City is training most of Central and Latin America on international affairs and diplomacy, far more advanced than any training that we can offer, or we are offering, or that is being offered.
In the North, there’s a longstanding tradition of research and scholarship on city diplomacy in China. Unfortunately, it is in Chinese, so it’s privy only to those that can read it, but, in fact, it’s much more extensive than anything we’ve done in the UK, for instance. And it is in these, type of places that you think, actually, those – there are some models that are much more necessary, pressing and effective and well tested than in lots of the Northern examples.
Dr Beyza Unal
Great, good to know. Now, I think I have a few speakers on the line like for the questions, yes. For the Q&A session, basically, please wait for the roving microphone to come to you and also, please state your name, as well as your affiliation, and it will be great if you keep your questions brief. I think I have Antonio as the first to raise his hand, so I’ll just go there and then I’ll come back to the other.
Antonio Sampaio
Thank you. Antonio Sampaio from the IISS. I was wondering what is the potential for growth in this urban foreign policy? Because there’s no doubt that within climate change and, I would say, resilience, the broad thing of resilience, cities have been quite successful in co-ordinating and forming these amazing coalitions. And when we talk about the future of urban foreign policy, I was trying to pick here some areas that I haven’t seen really, at the city foreign policy, and a classic example of foreign policy is peace and security broadly conceived. So, counterterrorism, organised crime, these things are still quite – when you hear debates about it and you read articles about it, it’s always – almost always from a nation state perspective, in terms of global policies or regional policies. Of course, there is city-to-city co-ordination within this, an exchange of information, but is it really foreign policy? I mean, how would you see the future, the potential for expansion of city foreign policy beyond climate change or resilience, which are incredibly important, but they seem, to me, like they are really long-term, you know, issues? So, how do we make it more connected to what is happening now, the, kind of, urgent needs?
And the other point is it seems to me that urban issues tend to be a bit siloed, like people in this room probably are within this group that believe in city diplomacy and the potential for city foreign policy. But if you look at Habitat III, which was supposed to be a summit of leaders, very few leaders attended and, in fact, I think it was just one or two. It was an incredible conference with amazing results, the new Urban Agenda, but how do you make the crowds, that are thinking about national policies and the UN crowd, how do you make them believe in that as well and bring cities and their Mayors and their leaders to the table as well?
Dr Beyza Unal
Thank you, Antonio.
Ivo H. Daalder
Let me take the first part and maybe you can take the second part, and you may want to comment on both of them. But on the question of, sort of, the agenda for urban diplomacy, I’d make two points. One, I think the agenda is, in fact, much larger than the current focal point on sustainability, which tends to be the focal point and, to some extent, add to that immigration and integration happens in cities. And the experience that we’ve had, in terms of how to think about migration, integration, is something where cities have a huge inclusiveness, have a huge potential of learning from each other and exchanging ideas that, in fact, at the national level, doesn’t work very well, so that’s one area.
The second area, just on the more high politics one, in terms of terrorism, it’s really fundamental, really interesting that the first call from Scotland Yard in 2005, and the bombing was, was to the NYPD Officers located here in – with Scotland Yard because they had the experience. And so, there is a city – this is a city-to-city information sharing, but it’s also about intelligence co-operation and the NYPD intelligence, Counterterrorism Intelligence Unit, is 2,000 people. It’s bigger than most countries, Intelligence Unit, and that’s just New York Police Department, no acronyms, NYPD. So, we promised, no acronyms, and so that’s the New York Police Department. But go further, turned out that the US Embassy here had no idea that these guys were sitting in Scotland Yard. They had no control over ‘em. In the US Embassy there is a – in any, certainly in the US, and I won’t speak for any other country, the Ambassador, Chief of Mission, owns all the US Government assets, which means that the CIA person is supposed to report to the Military attaché and the agricultural person, etc.
The Ambassador did not own the Officers from NYPD. They were independent, not a good idea. In fact, and this gets me to a larger point, let’s not look at city foreign policy as competitive to that of the state, but as, potentially, complementary and necessary for the effective conduct of a national foreign policy, because there is – there are resources capabilities and understandings, at a city level, that are absolutely core to the effectiveness and that’s your policy.
Take one final example, and where I think cities have their own policy, dealing in your area with pandemics. If you don’t want to deal with a pandemic, a national policy that ignores cities is going to be failing by definition, ‘cause it’s the cities that are the transmitters of the disease. So, an effective counterterrorist, counter-pandemic, on the bio side activity, has to, by definition, involve cities and not only cities in the country, because they’re globally connected through air transportation, cities around the world. So, thinking about how you bring cities into the larger framework after your foreign policy is not a academic exercise, it’s a necessity for effective policy and how Diplomats, at the national level, can interact with the state level is something that, for example, in the US Government, until very recently, we actually started thinking about and bringing global city diplomacy as part of our own national diplomacy and thinking about how that works.
Dr Beyza Unal
The second part, Michele, would you like to take that?
Michele Acura
Yeah, great, a good segue, ‘cause pandemics is how I started with cities. Agree and disagree, and agree on the point that, yes, having been Quito, yes, I can agree that it was a bit sparse, in terms of national leaders. But, the wind is changing, the wind has changed? A bit of a question mark on that. But if you count the number of countries that currently are developing and/or have developed a national urban policy, so a national framework for implementation of urban development, that is growing near exponentially. And, in fact, the OECD just released, with UN-HABITAT and RMIT, University in Australia, a very thorough review of that, that says, actually, more and more countries are doing this. If you take even – apologies for the Western example, but if you take Australia, cities are not even recognised constitutionally and yet, the country has finally taken on board to do that, a national urban framework, and is focusing on cities.
So, first of all, you have more and more national urban policy. Second of all, you have more and more a national data tension and scientific advice, attention on cities. New Zealand being a good example; United Kingdom, brilliant work done on the Foresight Future of Cities programme by the, then, BIS, now current BEIS, there’s more and more of those examples as well. And if you take the larger group of treaties, rather than focusing on a new urban agenda itself, which, perhaps, is the problem, in it being a very specific cut on cities, Paris and I are disembargo on financing sustainable development. We can name quite a few of these where, in fact, the role of cities quite clearly acknowledged and brought more on board, so I think that’s probably changing.
Dr Beyza Unal
Thank you very much. I – yes, there are two more questions coming up, three, four, all men. I would really like woman to actually raise their hands up as well for the next round. It would be great to hear woman voices as well. Can we go to the left side, please? I think, yes, gentleman and on the front.
Mohammed
Mohammed [inaudible – 37:49], member of Chatham House. I was sitting in a roundtable a couple of years ago with a lot of city dwellers. People who are – there is a bias of course, they’re all citizens of global cities, and the discussion was revolving around the world 30 to 50 years from now. There were three factors that, kind of, started the discussion: the economic concentration in cities, which is happening more and more. The similarities in cultures between global cities and, in many cases, more than their own nations, and defence not being dependent on large human forces, which is a future trend. You can see where I’m going with this. One prediction was that the world – you know, it’s not unthinkable for the world to see a super national city state structure that, kind of, abandons the structure of the current nation states. Do you think that’s – how far fetched is that?
Ivo H. Daalder
Simon’s written a book about that, Simon Curtis.
Michele Acura
[Inaudible – 38:58].
Ivo H. Daalder
I mean, my view is I think we need to have a serious discussion and consideration about this, for all the reasons that you lay out. I don’t think that the nation state is, by definition, the only organised mechanism for international politics. It hasn’t been historically, and it doesn’t need to be forever. I think we are moving in the situation of a hybrid anyway. If you look at the policies that certain cities in the United States are pursuing right now, they are diametrically opposed to these policies that are being pursued by the National Government, by the way, it’s not the only place in the world, sitting in London, where there might be the case. And the tension, attending to where a national, political forces are going and a – global cities are likely to grow, rather than to be reduced, depending a little bit on how political power is distributed and where and how voting mechanisms, etc., come out. But clearly, in the United States, the cities voted one way in 2016, and the smaller towns and rural areas voted in another way, and there is a huge bias in our electoral system that allows a majority to be defeated by a minority in this particular case. By the way, constitutionally, I’m not challenging, in any way, the idea that the outcome was not constitutional.
But that tension at which – you know, I live in Chicago, which is a – which is half the state of Illinois, the tension between the city of Chicago and the state is real, it’s there, it’s every day and so, the idea that somehow, because we have organised ourselves in certain ways for a very long time, we won’t necessarily – we will do that forever, I think is, in a 20 or 30 year timeframe, doesn’t make much sense. To exclude the possibility of independent city states and, by the way, we already have them, Singapore, and, in some ways, some countries, even though they are countries, are virtual city states. When half your population lives in Seoul, what Seoul wants is what South Korea wants, and when a growing – I guess it’s now 40% lives in Tokyo, where Tokyo goes is where – you know, that – it skews the relative power. So, yes, I think we need to have a serious discussion idea about – it happens, by the way, in the Middle East, of course, we have whole countries that are city states as well and that is – that may well be where the future goes, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Dr Beyza Unal
Thank you very much. I’m not turning to Michele. You don’t need to look at him like that. We have 15 minutes left, so I’m going to take more ques – I would like to take more questions, can we come to this part, please? Lady on the front, yes.
Member
Hi.
Dr Beyza Unal
Thank you very much, by the way, for raising your hand.
Member
You’re welcome. I studied global governance at UCL and I now work for an international humanitarian organisation. In terms of the rise of nationalism in Europe, to what extent can people have alliance to the cities that they were born in? And what is the experience in the US of a culture around cities and people affiliating themselves with a city, rather than the nation?
Dr Beyza Unal
Identity, which one of you would like to take the question?
Ivo H. Daalder
Do you want to take a couple more? Do you want to do them one-by-one?
Dr Beyza Unal
I think we can take this question and then…
Ivo H. Daalder
And much shorter answers.
Dr Beyza Unal
Yes, shorter answers.
Ivo H. Daalder
Give some other examples.
Michele Acura
Sure.
Ivo H. Daalder
You’re good.
Michele Acura
Actually, I think that’s a question to be solved. There’s some really good examples of that kind of conversation at Local Government level. Take Berlin with large diasporas in it. In fact, take Seoul as well, as another example, where that, kind of, conversation is now hitting the bar of how do we physically solve the problem? I think that no, I have yet to see a city that has solved that tension, but I think we’re getting closer and closer to the bits where it needs to be solved, and London is, in fact, a good example. And you can take it as a joke and not a joke, but the proposals of a London Visa in case of Brexit do get us quite close to that moment of tension where it needs to be solved, so stay tuned in next year or two, at the most.
Dr Beyza Unal
Alright, great, do you want to add any point, Ivo? You’re passing this.
Ivo H. Daalder
No, and I’m fine.
Dr Beyza Unal
Gentleman on the second, yeah, row there and then to Alan, please.
Angus Edwards
Angus Edwards, Chatham House member. Referring to your answer about the Global South cities and the huge increase in urbanisation that’s occurring there, how do you make sure that the incredible increase in numbers assures that the framework for urbanisation remains intact? Because, for example, I was living in [inaudible – 44:08] this autumn and they had a green belt around their city that has since been completely built over by immigrants coming into the city and ignoring the rules that were placed in there. So, often, the Global South cities don’t have the same funding that the Global North does, so how do you answer that problem of fixing to the framework?
Ivo H. Daalder
So, my answer would be, fundamentally, that it is in everybody’s interest, starting with people who don’t live in the Global South, to get this right. And so, if we don’t get urbanisation right, either from the sustainability perspective or social political perspective or an economic perspective, we’re just – there’s just going to be a huge problem and that problem doesn’t stay where it is today, it’ll come wherever people are, including here. So, I believe that urbanisation, globalisation and growth that you have is a huge opportunity for us, and just take Africa as probably the most important example. So, just to realise that two out of every five babies born in the last hour were born in Africa and two of the next five babies are also born in Africa. 40% of all live births today are in Africa. So, just think about what the population increase is going to be over the next 35 years. Much of that will be rural, but most of it will come into cities. That’s a huge opportunity, an extraordinary youth bolt of people with ideas and interests and buying power, if we get it right. It’s also a huge threat if we get it wrong.
So, thinking through how you create development is not something you do out of the charity of our own, you know, because we want to help poor people, it’s fundamental to our future prosperity. This is a huge market and, oh, by the way, we can probably learn an extraordinary amount that comes out of that. The leapfrogging of technology and of solutions and ideas that come out. Go to [inaudible – 46:19], a city, for example, that can teach many other cities how to come out of a civil conflict and a economic, social reconstruction capability. So, let’s not look at all of these things as problems and that won’t be solved, but as potential solutions that can benefit all of us. And if it goes wrong, to be there, to be part of it, to get it right and, by the way, learn from others who probably are getting it right, this is true on the diplomacy side as well, in order to make all of us better off.
Dr Beyza Unal
Perfect, can I take the question, Alan, are you still – two questions at a time, please, so can you give the roving mic to Alan? And then I’m going to come there and then to you.
Alan Philps
Hello, I’m Alan Philps, Editor of the World Today magazine at Chatham House. Canada is quite close to Chicago, or should I put that the other way around? I don’t know. Obviously, the…
Ivo H. Daalder
We’re not merging, however much some of us might want to.
Alan Philps
The future of the North American Free Trade Agreement must be of great importance to Chicago, has the city been able to influence the debate or the negotiations, or is that kind of thing still a step too far for a city?
Dr Beyza Unal
I’ll take the second question, Ivo, just a sec, another question from this gentleman.
Javier Jileta
Thank you. Javier Jileta from the Bartlett School of Architecture. My question is more regarding the implementation of the policy and what kind of roadblocks and what kind of issues did you experience while trying to, pretty much, work around the Government and trying to put them on board with the vision, with the foreign policy vision?
Dr Beyza Unal
I think the second question goes to Michele, and more about the implementation, if you’d like to take that one, or both of you, to you, Ivo?
Ivo H. Daalder
So, Chicago’s not only close to Canada. It’s the fourth largest Mexican city, you know, I think there two million Mexicans in the greater part. So, NAFTA’s pretty fundamental to the Midwest, by the way, and it’s an interesting perspective. The Canadians understand that and so Canada, the Government of Canada, has gone out and is – from the Prime Minister and the Ministers are working Governor cities all across the United States, and the way in which the process works, within the United States, is through a congressional process, ‘cause people may not know that, perhaps, including the person who is currently in the White House. But under the Constitution trade is regulated by Congress and so, that any change in NAFTA has to be approved by Congress, and the way in which you change or not change NAFTA is through your congressional leadership. So, it is that, actually very normal, very traditional, way in which you try to influence policy through the parliamentary or congressional system that allows you to get to this on the trade issue, and you don’t need a personal Chicago trade policy or Chicago NAFTA policy, which is pretty unwieldy. What you do need to point out is that if you do walk out of NAFTA and you’re able to get that done, that the consequences economically for your region are pretty significant, which, by the way, was, last I looked, a pretty significant vote for the person who is currently in the White House. So, that kind of political pressure is traditional and continues.
Dr Beyza Unal
And the second question.
Michele Acura
And concisely, number one, having a foreign policy doesn’t mean sending a ton of people overseas. So, in fact, implementation of a foreign policy or an international strategy, a good implementation, I would argue, of the types that we’ve seen is reflected, in a sense, in an internationalisation or globalisation of the other policies. So, if you take, sort of, the London plan and its international sort of elements, good implementation of that is internationalisation of, for instance, the London Waste Management Plan or the London Transport Plan. So, in a sense, an openness in those more technical parts are more topically specific to international collaboration to drawing on international examples, to drawing in a, sort of, multi city efforts and support. And, number two and, in fact, actually, perhaps you didn’t even need a separated foreign policy, as much more you need more strategically international elements of the various elements, like those of the London plans or other plans. So, in a sense, it’s more of a plea for being more strategically international than going to more conferences and canapés or just saying you’ve stolen an idea from someone, it’s about policy.
Ivo H. Daalder
And it’s about all good plans and spend time.
Michele Acura
Absolutely, I agree and, full disclosure. I’m trained in diplomacy as well.
Dr Beyza Unal
Questions have been raised. We have five more minutes, so I’m going to take two more questions. Matt was waiting from the very start, so to the front, to Matt, please, and then another question.
Matthew Oxenford
Hi, I’m Matthew Oxenford, Researcher in the Global Economy Department here at Chatham House and, relevant to this discussion, in a past life, a student of urban economics at the University of Chicago. And I’m very sympathetic to your argument and I do believe that, sort of, cities are much better, in a lot of ways, at developing common standards, best practices, etc. But, sort of, in the analogy to diplomacy there’s positive sum diplomacy, but there’s also a zero sum diplomacy and as cities take on a larger role in the global economy, do you see areas where, instead of looking at positive sum solutions, that they may drive a higher level of competition? I’m thinking within the US of something like Amazon’s headquarters or, in the UK, the stakes taking up the financial sector of London after Brexit and will we see more competitions like this as cities become more diplomatically active?
Dr Beyza Unal
I’ll just fit in the second question, really quickly, just like snatch a question. We have four minutes left for the answers. On the back, yes.
Josh Doder
Josh Doder, a Chatham House member. With Sadiq Khan, he likes to talk the talk with foreign policy, but what areas do you think London, specifically, can develop, in terms of foreign policy, over the next few years, specifically looking at Brexit, can the Mayor be involved in trade agreements?
Dr Beyza Unal
Michele, you just knocked over there, yeah
Josh Doder
And there’s nothing good for us now, and that’s great.
Ivo H. Daalder
I just moved into Melbourne, you can say whatever you want.
Michele Acura
Yes, I guess you will.
Dr Beyza Unal
If we can start from the second question, which is the hard one.
Michele Acura
Sure. Actually, there’s a whole argument as to London actually having done a lot already, and if you go beyond the individual Mayor, London was the initiator of the C40 Climate Leadership Group. London hosts the major office of that at the moment and is playing a really strong role on that so, in fact, on climate and on resilience, there’s more to be seen.
In terms of the Brexit/Sadiq Khan role, actually, what seems most promising is the London is open rhetoric and how does that then translate into actual co-operation agreements with other cities and with other institutions? Actually, there’s much more there to be done, for instance, on immigration and allowing more sensible working conditions in London, than on the trade agreements.
And, on the question of competition, I completely agree and I completely agree along the lines of saying actually, that’s where the proof of the pudding is. If we see more and more of that type of competition, the Amazon type, you’re seeing more and more of a return to the traditional mentality of city diplo – or city international engagement equals business, versus city diplomacy equals co-operation and, sort of, joint value creation. And, in that case, actually, there’s quite a bit of a split and it’s interesting how it is cities like Singapore and Dubai and sort of the likes of the more authoritarian ones looking for joint value creation versus, say, some of the American ones or, in fact, some of the UK ones that still play the game of competition and I want to gather more money for myself, rather than more money jointly with someone else.
Dr Beyza Unal
Ivo, would you like to head up the last comment?
Ivo H. Daalder
So, just on Brexit and London, just to make a pretty obvious point. When you have an electoral system that relies on referenda, you can’t have the kind of influence that you do through a normal parliamentary system and that creates the tension that you now see between the city and the rest, that’s just the reality of it. And the more you push and in a political system in that way, the more the tension between the centre periphery between cities and the nation will become a political problem that you will have to address, just as a side bar.
On the competition one, I agree, but, and there is a but, 263 cities looking at their own internal makeup and see how they could attract Amazon, only one of them is going to get it, but that means 262 cities have figured out what is their comparative advantage that they can sell to Google or whoever and, in fact, what improvements will they have to make in order to be more competitive in a growing global economy? And in that sense, that’s not a bad thing and so, it is a bad thing if you only look at who gets Amazon, and there’s some arguments that maybe the worst loser’s the one who gets it, but that’s a different – that a Richard Florida argument, which I’m not yet convinced that it’s true, since I think Chicago should get it. But I do think that cities looking at each other and what is it that makes them competitive in the global economy, in and of itself’s, not a bad thing for – even for each of the individual cities. It’s, kind of, how business works, it’s what competition is about, and I believe the competition may get everyone better off and not look at it in the zero-sum thing.
Dr Beyza Unal
Brilliant, thank you very much for the speakers and the audience to attend this event to make this event fruitful as well. Now I’m going to close the session because it’s 6:30 and I have given the order to close it on time. So, thank you very much, again, for coming.
Ivo H. Daalder
Thank you.
Michele Acura
Thank you [applause].
