The biennial Global Cities Index published by A.T. Kearney Management Consulting Firm, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Foreign Policy magazine, noted in its launch edition in 2008 that “the world’s biggest, most interconnected cities help set global agendas, weather transnational dangers, and serve as the hubs of global integration. They are the engines of growth for their countries and the gateways to the resources of their regions.” They listed an index of the top “world cities” including New York City, London, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, Chicago, Los Angeles, Singapore, Sydney, and Seoul, which are node points in the global economic system of finance and trade that are at the hub of the contemporary world.*
It is conceivable that increasing digital interconnection will accelerate the emergence of cosmopolitanism resulting in a league of “global digital cities” that could share in a system of global governance. This could enable the monitoring and distribution of renewable energies and education, health and other social needs to those areas of the world where it is needed. Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) pioneered such distribution approaches as well as practical plans for solving complex global problems which he called “comprehensive anticipatory design science.” Fuller advocated learning from nature’s underlying principles and the use of the trimtab principle whereby strategically applying relatively small amounts of resources produce maximum advantageous change for humanity.
Excerpt from essay “Imagining Digital Cities” by Nina Colosi Urban Media Cultures: (Re)Shaping the Public Space through Urban Screens and Media Architectures (2012) Editors: Susa Pop, Gernot Tscherteu, Ursula Stalder, Mirjam Struppek
