Globalism's associated and accelerating complexity of interconnected crises from migration to terrorism, from pandemics to climate change, define the new context of our 21st-century reality.  Unmanaged technological change and an outdated economic ideology compound the already unfair burden these crises impose on global citizens.  One need only consider the 18 percent approval rating of the United States Congress, the recent U.S. election, the EU/Euro fiasco, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Turkey (and more) to question whether the Nation State, a 400-year-old response to a different challenge in a different context, is up to the task.  

Ideological rather than pragmatic, a political abstraction that has no grounding in the concrete reality of where and how we live and how life-supporting ecosystems function, the Nation State, together with its political party structure, is not well equipped for today's most important globally interdependent challenges that cannot be solved through inter-State rivalries where self-interest and might rule the day.  

The "City State" predates the Nation State; it endures.  Rome is older than Italy, Alexandria is older than Egypt.  Cities are expanding as we know.  They are already home to more than half the world's population, and 80% in the developed economies.  They are home to 85% of the global economy (and associated greenhouse gas emissions) and much of the evolution of our culture.  Like it or not, we have become an increasingly urban species.  (Con't.)