Cities have been for thousands of years the centers of civilization as they

have watched empires kingdoms governments and corporations come and

go. But in the space of just a few decades our urban fabric is undergoing a
radical transformation. Today's wave of mass urbanization is historically
unprecedented in speed and scale. Today over 1 million people are added to
the global urban population every week in the space of a few decades. We
are in the process of doubling our urban capacity adding an extra 2 to 3 billion
more people to our urban environment as a consequence. The world is
currently going through its biggest build-out of technology infrastructure. In
history we will build more ports buildings roads bridges rail lines airports
power cables and telecommunication network in the coming decades than we
have since the beginning of civilization.
Much of this urbanization will unfold in the emerging economies of Africa and
Asia bringing huge social and environmental transformations. but also the
most significant shift in the earth's economic center of gravity ever seen our
future is set to be urban. as the world's population is increasingly
concentrated in urban settlements. this creates new opportunities and new
challenges in a fast changing context rapid unplanned urban growth can lead
to an expansion of urban slums exacerbating poverty and inequality.
hampering efforts to provide basic infrastructure and accelerate environmental
degradation. but urbanization also presents unprecedented opportunities for
rapid economic development as hubs of commerce transportation
communication and flows of financed cities drive economic and social
development offering us the unprecedented opportunity to bring the majority
of the world's population into the global economy of exchange.
not only are people flocking into cities at the same time our urban centers are
becoming integrated into ever larger and ever denser networks of exchange
the way cities are shaped. their scale scope of influence form and functionality
is being transformed to support the rise of global networks a myriad of
overlapping and intersecting flows of ideas knowledge people money goods
and services link not only major cities and city regions but an increasing
number of diverse places and ecology's into expanding global networks of
exchange these networks of economic social political and cultural
organization pivot around global cities creating a new geography of
connectivity new rules for economic success and new patterns of governance
the rise of urban networks is linked to a much broader set of social economic
and technological transformations taking place in the global economy today
this documentary explores this changing landscape and the development of
urban networks as the emerging geography of connectivity in an age of
globalization
urban networks are complex systems of people and technology the constitute
are engineered environment over the course of thousands of years we have
gone from the first engineered environments composed of a few discreet hand
tools and small shelters built around the individual and local community to the
complex urban networks of today that’s pan around the planet enabling global
economic processes to support billions of people just 12,000 years ago as few
as four million people inhabited the earth nomads that roam the land following
the seasons the first humans being nomadic would have lived almost
completely without fixed technology infrastructure simply using hand tools and
temporary shelters from about 10,000 years ago in response to the warming
climates at the end of the last ice age some groups adapted to the changing
environment in new ways these changes in organization would lead to the first
major paradigm shift in our engineered environment what we call the neolithic
revolution the neolithic revolution was the first major technology revolution the
critical turning point would have been the development of fixed and
permanent systems of agricultural production and permanent settlements built
around this permanent shelters like hut's storage areas wells for water
agricultural systems for food fixed pathways distinct buildings for congregation
and ceremony with all of these being integrated around the community
creating the first urban infrastructure systems the permanent settlement of
humans within fixed communities led to prolonged and sustained
technological and economic innovation giving rise to advanced civilization
advances in agriculture irrigation systems the harnessing of animal muscle as
an energy source and population density would lead to the formation of large
settlements in the form of hamlet's which evolved into towns and even cities
as the first empires formed with ever more complex economic and social
organizations forming we started to engineer our environments like never
before building the first human design landscapes in theform of urban centers
like the ancient cities of babylon or damascus [laughter][music] [laughter]
[music]throughout history the evolution of our engineered environment has
been directlyrelated to our knowledge of the natural environment around us
for much of humanhistory our scientific knowledge was very limited in scope
and depth thegreat expansion of this knowledge that happened during the
scientific revolution laid the foundations for amassive explosion in
technological change one of the hallmarks of the modern era the much
deeper understandingof our physical environment that modern science
brought enabled a new level inour capacities to engineer the natural
environment and gave rise to what hascome to be called the industrial
revolution the industrial age was theage of machines as we tapped into a new
energy source technology became aliveevolving into large mechanical
systems no longer dependent upon human andanimal energy sources we
could develop larger and larger mechanical systems powered by artificial
energy sourcesinstead of technology being built around people as with the
hand tool increasingly people based their workaround machines as they
became operators of large industrial machinery that enabled mass production
processes ourtechnology infrastructure became increasingly defined by
mechanized systems that automated physicalactivities by fueling them with
artificial energy sources this enabled a new scale to our engineered
environmentas urban centers greatly expanded [music][laughter] before 1800
there was less than 10% ofpeople living in cities and there was no overall
urbanization however this started to change in a substantive wayby the
beginning of the 1900s at which time 20 percent of world population wasurban
the development of industrial economies went hand-in-hand with the
development of the nation-state as thesocial and economic organizational unit
of the modern era during the 19th and20th century centralized national
governments worked to leverage these new industrial technologies towards
buildingtheir own national infrastructure systems the use of the combustion
engine to bring artificial energy sources tomass transport began to integrate
the infrastructure of whole national economies across broad
geographicalareas across europe and the u.s. National infrastructure
networks were developed during the 19th and early 20thcentury national
railways in europe national road systems like the interstate highways in the
u.s. National water systems telephone networks centralized broadcast media
by 1950urbanization had reached 30% around the world but it was not until
the new millennium before we would reach the symbolic tipping point of half of
humanity living in urban centers[music]by the latter half of the twentieth
century major new technological and economic processes of change
wereunderway as national economies and infrastructure were becoming
increasingly connected into globalnetworks of exchange the advent of low-
cost computing and telecommunication networks would work to enable
thedevelopment of ever larger more complex systems of organization in the
80s and90s financial markets became deregulated and expanded into a
global network ofexchange we saw a huge rise in multinational corporations
as theyexpanded beyond their national economies entering into new markets
through outsourcing enterprises becamedistributed out with advances in
transport and trade liberalisation integrated global supply chains startedto
take form and the global economy expanded hugely within the space of just a
few decades[music]with the development of globalization the emergence of
the services economyand information technology the global economy is going
through a deep structural transformation moving from anindustrial model of
mass production organized around the nation-state and its territory into a new
form ofservices and information economy based around global networks of
exchange urbannetworks are the physical means of connectivity they are
systems of technology that enable us to overcomephysical borders and
connect with ever larger networks these networks of roadsof communications
of power lines of logistics air transport shipping are thephysical form of this
global connectivity [music]there are now vastly more resources moving
around in these global networks than in any national economy and aroundthe
world people are flocking to cities as points of access into these emerging
global networks and the opportunitiesthey provide as our economies and
societies develop into some form of global organization so to our
technologyinfrastructure is morphing into a new structure of urban networks
that enablesthis physical connectivity just as the industrial technologies
provided thephysical means for enabling the national economy so too our
technology infrastructure today is beingreconfigured to provide the
connectivity for a global economy [music]it is only in very recent years the
global economy has switched from being dominated by agriculture and
industry tobecoming predominantly based on services and information as a
consequence societies and economies around the worldare being
transformed from being primarily organized around physical agricultural and
industrial processeswithin the national territory and instead moving to the
delivery of services the processing of informationand knowledge which is no
longer defined by its physicality and the logic of territoriality but instead is one
basedon the logic of access and connectivity it is this connectivity that
urbancenters provide as economies shift from being industrial to post-
industrial services economies a new strategic roleis given to cities as they
become the locus of high value-added services ofinnovation and knowledge
creation[music]with globalization and urbanization we are in the process of
creating a newgeography a geography based around functional connectivity
instead of physical borders whereas the building ofthe nation-state and its
borders was cultural and ideological in nature these global networks are
functional in natureconnections are made horizontally to facilitate exchanges
in a world wheremarket logic and technology have combined to create a
powerful engine driving the world forward for better orworse [music]the
infrastructure networks that now stretch around the planet are held together
by urban centers that formdense concentrations of connectivity urban centers
function as the hubswithin regional networks that reach into the territory of the
locality linking it into larger networks of exchange on themacro level these
urban centers become nodes within the global network of cities that provide
the critical mass ofadvanced services required to operate the world economy
at its current level of functionality[music]the leaders in providing this
connectivity are what we call global cities these are urban centers thatprovide
the services for integrating the whole network a network of over 100global
cities is now understood as the landing point for worldwide networks offinance
and the hubs for logistics networks these cities constitute a myriad of
overlapping and intersectingflows of ideas knowledge people money goods
and have a direct and tangibleeffect on affairs around the planet when the
world is seen from this perspective of urban connectivity a new
imageemerges where each city is horizontally oriented to other cities of the
samelevel of interconnectivity as cities have become interconnected over the
past decades they have come to identifythemselves increasingly in relation to
their peer cities around the world instead of so much with their
nationaleconomy as these major urban centers have risen they have both
come to takeon more power and influence over their own operations and the
operations of the global economy but they have also cometo differentiate
themselves within these larger networks and increasingly compete with other
cities[music]being a global city though is not about size or even economic
scale it is aboutperforming a differentiated function within a global network of
exchange and thus making them a strategic locationwithin a worldwide value
chain global cities play specific roles in specificnetworks for example cities like
taipei and shenzhen our major nodes in thesupply network for high-tech
electronics while cities like geneva and nairobi are important nodes in global
civilsociety networks dubai and hong kong for air transport networks
washington andbrussels for international political networks but the absolute
leaders in this global connectivity play a majorrole in almost all these networks
london new york tokyo and paris these urbannetworks are the most complex
multi-dimensional and their influence is the farthest reaching they regulate
vastflows of financial capital effectively coordinate millions of people and
production processes in a multiplicityof overlapping complex networks tourist
attractions research centres shoppingdestinations tech startups the engines of
the knowledge economy corporate headquarters melting pots of peopleideas
culture all concentrated in small areas of dense interaction and connectedinto
information networks that shape the operations of the economy around the
world[music]the urban transformation that is occurring to enable these global
information and services networks is notjust about cities getting bigger it is a
reconfiguration of territory and basic organizational principles fromcultural and
territorial borders to functional connectivity globalization creates a new form of
space based aroundnetworks of exchange and the physical form of that space
is urban networksthis new geometry of urban networks driven by a market
logic responsiveprimarily to global networks of exchange and operated by
powerful private actors creates a huge disjunction with localterritory and
existing governance structures cities still exist and operate within the national
regulatoryframework which is designed according to the logic of its fixed
territorial space when increasingly our economy andsociety operate based
upon global networks anchored in cities thesenetworks of information and
services are increasingly bypassing the national territory altogether creating a
new kindof global and local space that exists in urban centers one that
requires a neworganizational paradigm to structure and enable nowhere is
this disjunction seenmore clearly than in the major financial centers that are
seen as the most strategic nodes in these global networksglobal cities are the
landing points for the world's flow of capital and goods as these networks
have grown the power ofthe corporations that operate them has likewise
expanded greatly the global city is the space where that powerbecomes
materialized a point where highly abstract flows of capital and information
become something materialand visible to all [music]throughout history urban
centers have been the home of the dominant sources of power within society
with the building'sused to exhibit the power of those dominant actors whether
this was the church government buildings or themonuments of empires but
over the past decades the centers of our iconic worldcities has become the
locus of corporate headquarters and financial centers withthe rise of economic
globalization the multinational corporations and financial institutions that
manage and operatethese networks become the dominant actors this power
is exhibited in a global city which has come to be shapedto a great extent by
these powerful actors according to their logic and to accommodate their
needs[music]financialization has changed the form of investment in urban
development with significant results for how urbannetworks have evolved over
the past decades the lines between private and public have blurred while at
the sametime the logic of finance becomes more pervasive in the
development of the urban space cities have becomeincreasingly defined in
terms of investment vehicles instead of shared living spaces huge amounts of
capitalare now flowing into the development of the primary urban centers from
the global financial system thisfinancialization of real estate and urban centers
has created a huge disjunction between the local needs ofcommunities and
those of these private actors where once urban development was driven by
local incentives in responseto the local needs of the place with financialization
cities are becoming increasingly private spaces ofinvestment that are primarily
responsive to the logic of these flows of finance[music]the process of
globalization engenders an evolving relationship between thelocal needs of
people and the market logic of global networks world cities are at the
epicenter of this conflictthey are the frontier zone of globalization and the
struggle for new systems of organization that would berelevant for an age of
networks in a time when existing governance structuresare paralyzed by the
complexity of the issues at hand cities take pragmatic action because they
have to they are atthe forefront of financialization and environmental changes
the effects of these changes impact them directly andthey are pushed to take
action in the absence of appropriate governance mechanisms cities are
becoming a newlocus of action but this is a very different form of governance
than the one we are used to it will be agovernance structure that expresses
the new forces at play of finance and corporate supply chains of
technologyand increasingly internet platforms[music][music][music][music]the
rise of urban networks and the movement of humanity into a predominantly
engineered environmentcorresponds to a broader process of change brought
about in the anthropocene the so called age of humans after 1950we can see
for the first time that major earth system changes became directly linked to
changes largely related to theglobal economic system with this coinciding with
the huge rise of major urban centersurban centers occupy only 3% of global
land areas but their physical impact isdirectly connected to very complex
environmental transformations that take place far beyond the confines of
thecity large-scale planetary metabolic flows are mobilized in order to
supplythe largest urban centers whole region's territories and landscapes
areoperationalized in new ways in order to provide food energy water
materials andother basic resources that result in massive transformations in
ecosystems far away and often unseen by thepopulation landscapes in
malaysia are transformed into palm plantations forbiofuels that keep urban
transport systems running cement and iron arepulled out of the ground in
russia to lay concrete for the 20 million chinese moving into cities every year
watersystems in the himalayas are altered to provide for the urban centres of
northern india rare earth metalsextracted from africa for the millions of
smartphones that keep paris connected[music] because you knew what is he
gonna rapeyouthe largest of these land and resource consumers are what we
call mega cities which are urban centers of more than 10million people in
1915 new york was the first mega city on the planet by 1985there were nine of
such kind today there are 31 mega cities and this is projectedto rise to 41
within just over a decade the largest of these mega cities istokyo with over 30
million people it is the 10th largest economy in the worldlarger than russia
spain or turkey [music]jakarta is likewise one of the largest mega cities it's
mass of concrete sprawling out to support a populationgreater than that of
australia [music]environmentally many of the factors relating to the
sustainability of an urban center are closely connected tothe density of the
urban environment the current model of urbanization in many parts of the
world engenders low densitysub urbanization with the dependence on car
ownership it is energy intensive andcontributes substantive li to climate
change for example urban development in mexico city has resulted in a
sprawlingurban environment with air pollution and major traffic congestion a
city with anaverage daily commute time of two and a half hours the physical
space that thesecities consume is projected to increase two to three times in
the coming decades and the material consumption of citiesis likewise set to
double over this time sprawling cities where residents aredependent on cars
to obtain basic provisions in far-off places of the city are a critical vulnerability
manypopulations around the world face today as the impacts of climate
change are set to only increase in the coming decadeslarge monolithic
centralized urban systems are presenting increasing vulnerabilities[music]the
rise of urban networks corresponds to a transformation in the traditional
divided between countryside and citywhich is giving way to a much more
subtle combination cities are becoming distributed out into larger
urbannetworks merging natural and engineered environments within a new
geography of the city region that may span hundredsof kilometres and cross
national borders interlinked ground transportation corridors such as high-
speed rail andexpressways have aided in the integration of urban centers into
large distributed networks like the randstadarea in northern europe connecting
amsterdam rotterdam and the hague or the pearl delta region in southern
chinaconnecting hong kong shenzhen and guangzhou which is emerging as
the largest urban area in the world in bothsize and population in the age of the
anthropocene when human impacts on thebiosphere are all pervasive the
challenge of sustainability is no longer one of confining urban centers but
isnow one of developing engineered environments that managed to merge the
natural and artificial in new ways tocreate synergiesin the challenge of city
density is also the opportunity for creating multifunctional compact integrated
andecologically connected urban environments ecologically efficient urban
systems are strategicallydensified and distributed to create a network of high-
density nodes interconnected with efficient andaffordable mass transit in
these compact well-designed urban environments peopleconsume less
energy less land and are more connectedwith the rise of urban systems we
are increasingly recognizing that the battle for a sustainable future will be won
orit will be lost in cities and there is a race to build a functional sustainable
model of a city and to replicate thatmodel around the world [music]you
[music]cities have been the world's economic engines for centuries attracting
skilled workers and benefiting from economies ofscale to create productive
enterprises historically urbanization and per capita gdp tend to move in close
sync ascountries develop no country has ever reached middle income status
without urbanizing by harnessing economies ofscale attracting firms sharing
knowledge and fostering pools of talent citieshave a special ability to achieve
results that are more than the sum of their parts adding value for bothsociety
and enterpriseswith the rise of massive urban centers in developing
economies we are witnessing the most significant shift inthe earth's economic
center of gravity in history the world economy is now truly becoming globally
distributed outless and less centered around the developed economies the
urban areas ofafrica and asia will absorb nearly all of the projected growth of
the world population in the coming decades of the2.5 billion new urban
dwellers anticipated by 2050 90% will live inafrica and asia china india and
nigeria being the primary locus of a process ofurbanization that now offers
hope for raising billions out of poverty and creating a more balanced
overalldistribution of resources in the world around the world people are
flocking to cities as points of access into theseemerging global networks and
the opportunities they provide for this process of urbanization to be
successfulthe city has to connect its population into global economic networks
of exchange but many are ill-prepared forthe scale of the process that is
underway when managed effectively urban centers can be systems for
connecting people andproviding them with opportunities as we have seen with
the development of urban asia in china a coalescence ofurbanization and
massive economic growth helped pull six hundred and eighty million people
out of extreme povertyover the course of just 30 years unprecedented in
history the success ofmany asian nations has shown us the capacity of urban
centers connected to global supply chains to transformpeople's standard of
living and opportunities [music]but in other parts of the world urbanization has
been a force for exclusion until recently urbanizationlargely happened within
countries with relatively high gdp what has changed inthe past decades is that
it is increasingly happening in nations with very low gdp these nations are the
leastwell equipped economically and socially to deal with the transformation
the hugemigration into sub-saharan african cities appears to overwhelm
government planners and policy makers with theoutcome being that slum
dwellers currently account for over 60% of urban population while these
african urbancenters have had the highest inequality of wealth in the world
cities that failto meet the aspirations of the millions who are migrating in
search of better opportunities run the risk of becomingfailed projects breeding
new social and environmental challenges of an unprecedented scale and
complexity lackof infrastructure creates congestion pollution and insufficient
public services instead of connecting peoplethese urban systems sprawl out
into disconnected slums as informal urban networks fill the gap of
overextendedand underfunded government's the slums are huge urban
systems with illegalarrangements of land-use the generally lack infrastructure
public facilities and basic services such as improveddrinking water waste
disposal or transport much of the growth in urban networks over the coming
decades willnot be the formal planned infrastructure systems of the past but
instead informalsettlements of this kind the informal slums of developing
nations are growing in a significant way according to unitednations statistics
the number of people living in slum conditions has grown from 650 million in
1990 to 760 million in2000 and as of 2017 nearly 1 billion people live in
slumsthis is set to double by 2030 under a business-as-usual scenario
[music]as these slums are growing around the world in formal urban networks
are becoming the new normal for urbandevelopment kabara on the outskirts
of nairobi is considered one of the largest with some 600,000 people dharavi
inmumbai is home to upwards of 700 thousand residents living in shacks in rio
de janeiro the favelas startedappearing in the 1950s and now housed a total
of about 1 million people[music]inclusive growth is a major challenge that we
are far from achieving insteadof connecting people many of these emerging
mega cities are becoming more economically unequal they are
becomingmore fractured and compartmentalized over the decades developing
economieshave been getting better at achieving growth but have often seen
the benefits of that growth concentrated in the upperlevels of the income
distribution socially our current model ofurbanization in many places around
the world generates multiple forms of inequality and exclusion which
createsspatial divisions in cities often characterized by slum areas or gated
communities in places like south pauloor johannesburg inequality is now
recognized as a major emerging urbanissue as the gap between the rich and
the poor in most countries is at its highest levels in decades
increasinglyenvironmental and social sustainability are becoming linked and
seen as no longer nice things to have but insteadactual security issues
environmental degradation is changing ecosystemsaround the world
ecosystems that hundreds of millions of small-scale subsistence farmers are
dependent uponwhen they change and people can no longer continue with
their traditional ways of life this often leads tomigration into cities which are ill-
prepared for them the net result being that they end up in slums as
theenvironmental crisis unfolds going forward this linkage will only become
stronger and more critical environmentalchanges will feed through to reveal
previously latent networks of vulnerability in our social systems andtechnology
infrastructure as global interconnectivity proliferates these networks of
vulnerability willspread farther and shocks will propagate faster what happens
in the slums of mumbai and lagos will increasinglyaffect everyone[music]
globalization is the building of global systems of economic social
andtechnological organization this connectivity crosses borders reduces
alldivides and creates inter dependencies that bind diverse people and places
through shared interests opportunitiesand threats global cities are physical
super connectors in this network butthey are also super disconnectors when
urbanization is successful people becomeintegrated into a global economy
and society when it is unsuccessful they become disconnected and divided in
newways but the consequences of that are no longer local with
interconnectivitycomes interdependencies and the benefits and losses
become increasingly shared globally in the space of just the pastfew decades
we have created a new economic system of organization in the form of global
supply chains and theurban networks that support them global cities are now
the engines driving the world forward and how the process ofurbanization
plays out in the coming decades will shape the structure of what happens this
century and indeed thefuture of the relationship between human beings and
the planet the current process of urbanization is nothing lessthan a
fundamental transformation in the human habitats the indigenous environment
of humanity is changing fromthe natural environment to the engineered
environment at a breathtaking speed in the space of just a few shortdecades
we will remake our environment and the patterns of organization that shape
society and economy in thisprocess we don't just rebuild the world around us
but urbanization changes us itcreates a new environment new ways of
thinking new patterns of work of governance of production and exchange
ofinteraction between people through which we come to redefine ourselves
and our relationship to the natural environment[music][music]you [music]