Connectivity- the Lifeline of Cities

“Connectivity is the new meta-pattern of our age” (Parag Khanna)

Among the popular urban planning buzzwords connectivity is currently king. Progressing from sustainability to resilience to connectivity makes some sense, especially when applied to cities: There’s no sustainability without resilience and no resilience without connectivity. In the universe of inspiring TED talkers simplifying our increasingly complex world, Parag Khanna and connectivity stand out. 

Nobody speaks more glowingly about the global impacts of connectivity than this talk show guest du jour, "global strategist", and cosmopolitan based in Singapore, educated in the US. His new book: Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization is an urgent antidote to the provincialism of isolationists that is mushrooming in Europe and the US (The European Union and Brexit, the anti-trade agreement movements, the populist stands against immigration in the US). The book and his theories for everything catapult the media darling once again around the globe (Video). Khanna likes cities and he has much to say about them:

“We are moving into an era where cities will matter more than states and supply chains will be a more important source of power than militaries – whose main purpose will be to protect supply chains rather than borders.” (Khanna)

The first part of this declaration is not particularly original; Neil Peirce has made the same point in his book Citistates 23 years ago, but that doesn't make the concept any less plausible. Khanna, as young as my second oldest daughter, uses connectivity as his favorite explanation. One is reminded of the saying that "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail", but there is a lot for whichconnectivity provides an explanation. The proclamation about the supply chains is less convincing. Instead of the future, it smacks of the imperialism of the early decades of the last century when industrial nations enslaved poor countries for their commodities only to sell manufactured products back to them, indenturing them further. In fact, Khanna himself states that modern connectivity makes the old-time strategies of embargo and supply chain control ineffective and obsolete. "Russia's gas pipelines can also work in reverse" he observes referring to the connectivity of gas pipelines and the attempt of Russian control over the supply of gas to Crimea.

Even if one doesn't accept that connectivity is the cause or cure for everything (Khanna seems to lean towards cure), it is hard to argue that the lack of it is a severe disadvantage, no matter what scale one considers. Different from the biblical lone prophet who severs connectivity on purpose to withdraw into the desert for contemplation, the modern world thrives on connectivity like an athlete on steroids. Even Luddites cannot contest that connectivity is also the principle of nature and evolution: Everything is connected to everything until the famous flap of a butterfly wing causes a storm on the other side of the globe.

The Khanna map of the 50 global urban centers

In Connectography, Khanna's portmanteau of connectivity and geography, he visualizes his topic with well illustrated maps. The most telling one may be the map of 50 global metropolises which will govern the world, selected and mapped by Khanna based on population density and GDP contribution. These select global urban centers are multi-core clusters representing far more than one city.  North America has only two such clusters: the megalopolis from Boston to DC and the region from LA to San Francisco.

One only needs to take a late plane from Dulles Airport to Europe to see how the frequently high-flying author comes to his megalopolis lumps: From 30,000 feet, DC to Boston appears as one continuous sea of lights.

But to those in the trenches these two US definitions may come as a great surprise. Places like Hartford, New Haven, Newark, Wilmington or Baltimore may actually feel great relief. Being comfortingly lumped in with Boston, New York and the District of Columbia is a triumph of sorts in its own right, let alone joining the illustrious global club of just 49 members; no need to suffer any longer from the inferiority complex that has plagued these cities for decades.

But not so fast. The reality on the ground plays to different rules: Provincially minded governors sever connectivity on a moments notice by closing bridge lanes (Chris Christie), taking a planned tunnel out of a project pipeline (Chris Christie) or killing a multi-billion transit line positioned first in the federal construction queue (Hogan). Rarely do the cities in Khanna's agglomeration actually collaborate. It is far more likely that they are stealing each other the butter from the bread or outdo each other with lavishing potential investors with subsidies. On the most local level, flush suburban counties surrounding large cities are known to gleefully refuse collaboration with their ailing nucleus, even though without it they wouldn't exist.

People in Salt Lake City, Austin or Denver may not subscribe to this high-flying view of things either, where everything across a stretch of 450 miles gets readily lumped into one pack, while their own very prosperous and rapidly growing  metros are left out, only because they don't have any big neighbors. One could argue that their singularity is precisely why they thrive.

But Khanna would remind us that in the global view things are just so much bigger than the US or Euro-centric view would have it. To qualify in the global competition, he would point out, it takes far more than one big city to register. Which is precisely the reason for his book in the first place: In the 21st century connectivity and networking have become prerequisites for survival. For the localities marred in provincialism this doesn't bode well.

Like most older "legacy" cities, my base, Baltimore, has connectivity in its DNA: Its port and first US passenger railroad were the cause of its rise to at one point second largest city in the US. The decline to rank 29 (and slipping) cannot easily be explained by lack of connectivity. Baltimore's port is still the third largest on the East Coast, the city is connected to the country's only viable train service, it is in the cross-hair of nation-traversing interstates and has its own thriving international airport.

Connectivity

What seems to be missing, Khanna helpfully provides us with the term functional geography, is connectivity of a different kind. There is virtually no connectivity between the rich and the poor neighborhoods of Baltimore, just as there isn't any in any of the large US cities. Baltimore may stand out because both, wealth and poverty are extreme around here. As noted, regional connectivity is poor as well. Regional planning is mostly a paper exercise executed without much conviction. Collaboration between Baltimore and Washington, even though joined into one metro statistical area, is absent except for the State's contributions towards Washington's subway system which extend into Maryland. Collaboration between Baltimore and, say, Newark is entirely non existent, unless one wants to count Corey Booker's appearance here during his recent book tour, so is collaboration with Philadelphia, New York, or Boston. 

It can be depressing to take Khanna's pronouncements and check them against the various tiers of the increasingly provincial US political arena. While Khanna declares:

"You cannot imagine any stable state without a stable city. We talk about state-building when we should be talking about city-building. Cities are the oldest continuous form, and yet we focus on institutions rather than on this foundation of society. Cities represent an ever-increasing share of the economic value of a state. Thus it’s not about a duality or opposition between city and state. It’s about harnessing the resources of the city to also strengthen the state." (Khanna to NextCity)

But suburban county leaders and small town mayors continue to hold their noses when it comes to the big city problems of their states or regions and continue to cannibalize each other. (Whereby it is understood that Khanna nations and not the US States when he uses the term).

Aside from the quibbles about Khanna's book, there are important lessons here for the US and its cities:

Contrary to what some presidential candidates say, the US needs to invest in infrastructure and not in the military to remain a leading power in the world. Khanna says that even today global investment in infrastructure is twice global military expenditure and expected to grow to a 3:1 or even 4:1 ratio. By a similar logic, locally, education spending should trump spending on prisons and police, alas, it isn't so.

The myopic and somewhat fearful world-view so common today in the US is surprising. Looking back over the last 50 years, the US has been way more successful through connectivity than through military might: Hollywood films, jeans, hamburgers, even US beer and coffee shops, traditional Old World staples, haven taken the world in storm. US culture permeates every corner of the world. The Internet, Uber, Microsoft and Facebook, all connectivity inventions of the US, all popular the world over. The US pattern of building cities, car-centric with superblocks, has taken root all the way to China. Through the genome project the US deciphered nature's connectivity principles. No need to look at the lost wars to see from where US power really emanated.

China has only one aircraft carrier but maintains the world’s largest merchant marine fleet (Khanna)

But as the merchant marine example shows, US dominance cannot be taken for granted. Khanna's proclamations (Book cover: "A must read for the next US President"), don't tell us how to solve the increasing lack of the "other connectivity". It is hard to dispute some of Khanna's observations, but the solution is another matter. Neo-libertarian "free trade over everything", no matter how loud the author touts the globalization horn, does not seem to bear the solution to inequity. It doesn't even solve the persistent global financial crisis.

The future of production and the future ways how people can earn their living may well be very connected, but it is all still largely shrouded in mystery and unattainable to ever larger numbers of global citizens. The Swiss experiment of a base salary for all seemed like an interesting approach but was quashed by referendum. 

Being able to open a garage door from thousands of miles away, seeing a grandchild on a personal phone while traveling somewhere on the globe, sending pictures instantly around the world, all that is connectivity but doesn't put bread on the table or give people meaning, worse, even that type connectivity is not available to all. How the people of West Baltimore and a growing number of disenfranchised communities across America and the world can free themselves from extreme isolation and disconnectedness and earn a decent living remains a challenge to be solved. Karl Marx predicted an international uprising. In spite of the ever more acute contradictions, there is no evidence evidence of any kind of connected uprising. What we have instead, are international refugees.

Khanna says about Germany's capital which long languished in the shadow of the Wall: "Berlin's magic formula has been affordable rent, openness to immigrants and lots of babies." Maybe, if Baltimore, Newark and New Haven band together, their relative affordability is a good jumping off point for leveraging economic power, indeed.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
edited by Ben Groff, JD

Links:
Next City about Connectography
Khanna about migration (video)
Khanna Connectography, NYT Book Review
Economist review

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