Parag:
But, at the same time
we are engaging in this topographical engineering.
These very robust engineering systems by which
we modify the planet to suit what we want it to do
what our various economic and political activities are.
This is a very different way of thinking about
how we map and what we map and what matters most on the map.
( audience applause )
Connecto-graphy, connect-ography
I've already heard it pronounced a thousand which ways.
But of course, what I'm talking about
is the fusion of connectivity and of geography
And all of that "connectivity revolution", as I call it
falls into three particular categories
that I liken to three systems in the human body.
And what we have here is the world's highways and railways
oil and gas pipelines, electricity grids
internet cables.
All of this infrastructure that has massively, exponentially
accelerated our ability to move people and goods and resources
and knowledge and technology and ideas around the world.
And that revolution is in, by many measurements or metrics
really just getting underway.
As I said, we are just in the early phases
of this incredible build-out of global infrastructure.
By some estimates
we'll spend, not just the $4 trillion per year
on infrastructure that we spend today
but, rising to $7-8 trillion in the coming years.
Meanwhile, military spending worldwide
though it's rising in quite a few geographies
as an aggregate, is relatively steady
at around $2 trillion.
So, what happens when we build-out
all of this infrastructure
as this... as these infrastructures
sort of envelop and wrap around the world?
I believe that we...
we evolve beyond one of the most
ancient adages and phrases that we all know.
Geography is destiny.
Instead, we think of the arc of history
as really taking us in a certain direction.
And that direction is more and more and more connectivity.
There's a term in this for academia.
Extra-statecraft, in which that infrastructure is so real
where so many borders are considered artificial
that it has an authority, a gravity if you will.
And when countries build infrastructure
like a highway or a railway or an electricity grid
something really basic
you know, that they share with each other
it winds up being something that is almost a...
irrevocable bond. It's obviously positive sum.
And the more of those that you have
the less one thinks about
not sovereignty as guiding their relations
but this connectivity really shaping
how they relate to each other.
And so, that's the shift that's happening now
from political geography being
the most paramount feature of the map
which is again the borders
to the functional geography
which is the infrastructures and the supply chains.
Gradually, what I believe what happens next
is what I call the
that eventually emerges from all of this infrastructure.
Within that, you still have empires, you still have nations
you have city-states, you have all of these various actors.
But, it all adds up to a sort of co-existing civilization.
The Sijori growth triangle.
Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia
are trying to optimize their space.
And what you have here is a case, where you have
a country Singapore, which has very--
almost no land, but a lot of capital.
Country like Malaysia
that has quite a bit of land and labor and some capital.
And Indonesia, which has a lot of land and a lot of labor
and very little capital.
So, you take these three countries
that are all very close to each other and they said
starting in the 1970s, in the 1980s
"Let's start to take Singaporean money
and Malaysian and Indonesian land
and Indonesian labor and put it on some islands
that nominally belong to Indonesia
and let's start building ships
that are owned by Singaporean companies.
But, let's optimize our geography
let's treat it like we are connected by one supply chain."
And that's what they started to do.
And you wouldn't know that there is
one set of rules in one place and another
because now people can
increasingly move seamlessly around them.
And that's how places one by one, gradually...
neighbors shift, transition from political geography
to functional geography.
But, the supply chains are in fact
the original worldwide webs.
And they are, that system of transactions
that gets any one thing to--
one thing from one place to any another place.
And in many cases in the global supply chain today
we no longer really know where something is made.
And so, I believe that the labels on everything
from clothing to computers and so on
should really be made everywhere.
If you look at where the design is done
the manufacturing is done
the production, the marketing, the distribution
the insurance, the repair of any given product.
It involves companies and sub-contractors and so forth
from all over the world.
There's very little that is made
exactly where the label says it is, in fact.
And that's what happens when we get to the supply chain world.
You can see it in the fact
that trade now reaches every corner of the planet.
You can see it in the ways in which
people in the financial industry are affected
by the financial crisis of 2008.
Collapse of manufacturing as a result of the financial crisis.
Automobile workers and
manufacturing workers around the world
simultaneously lose their jobs.
You may not have noticed it
because that may not be your circuit.
But, people who work in that industry all over the world
simultaneously affected.
Such is the nature of that connectivity among this project.
It is a very human thing
because each and every one of us belongs to some kind of circuit.
And we move, we gravitate towards the supply chain
towards these circuits.
We want to be part of them and when the supply chain
and when infrastructure doesn't come to you, you go to it.
Right, and that is why so many people today
that's why there's more migrants than ever in history today.
People are on the move.
One of the ways in which economists or others
would measure the extent of globalization is, they would say
"Well, X and Y number of people
have crossed borders any given year."
That's not the correct way to measure
a globalization in my view.
It's how many people are connected and to get connected
you don't have to move across an international boundary.
Most people will never leave the country they were born in.
But, if you move to a city, you have access to services.
You may work in a factory of a foreign company
you're connected to supply chains
you'll have a mobile phone.
All of these things connect you to the world
even though you have never left the country.
So, to me, the rate of urbanization
is the greatest measurement
of the extent to which mankind is getting connected.
And of course,
we live in a rapidly, rapidly urbanizing world.
Now, most of the world's population
does live in cities already.
Part of this global network civilization
part of this move from political to functional geography is that
perhaps, not surprisingly
cities can be seen as more important
in many ways than countries.
So, what is on this map is every human being in the world.
You have the entire world's population here
and you have the population density as well.
And you have these ovals showing you the kind of outlines
of where the largest, most populous mega-city clusters are.
And then the large circles tell you, what percentage
what share of the national economy those cities represent.
So, what you're seeing here
is not only where mankind is concentrated
but of course, just how significant
those particular clusters are where they're located.
And so, 30 or 40 of these
represent a growing share of the world economy.
And by the year 2030, most projections estimate
there will be about 50 mega-city archipelagos.
And these really represent
the preponderant share of the world economic activity.
So, I've put, kind of all of them up on one map here.
And again, I ask the question
you're trying to understand how the world works.
It's not a naive question
I wonder which map tells you more.
This one or the conventional ones?
Or maybe some mix of the two.
But certainly not one that ignores this.
Because a map that ignores this is not actually capturing
who we are, where we are and what we do.
Part of this story is what I call 'pop-up cities'.
Special Economic Zones.
Fifty years ago we had almost
no Special Economic Zones in the world today.
Geographies, industrial parks that were set aside
and designated primarily for the purpose
of attracting in foreign investment
bringing in technology
training workers, boosting exports
allowing countries and their labor force
to rise up the value chain.
Today, we have 4,000
such Special Economic Zones in the world today.
It is the most rapidly expanding type of city.
So, this is a very significant trend in the world today.
China has become an empire of such mega cities.
Each of which has almost a designated economic function
in the global supply chain.
And if you think about it, it's fascinating.
It's very, very instructive
in the shift from political to functional geography.
That the world's oldest continuous civilization
with very diverse provincial and linguistic histories
in many of its provinces, would say
"That's all fine and good.
You can keep your dialects and your culture and so on.
But, we need to organize the country in a new way
so that each of these mega-city clusters
has an internally viable economy.
So, it has anywhere from 20 to 100 million people.
So that it has lots of services and transactions
going on among people, so it's not dependent
just on exporting one kind of widget or product.
But, at the same time, each one is very connected to each other
through high speed rail networks and highways and so forth
and internationally to the global economy.
And this process of reorganizing the sort of
the management of a country is something
that we're starting to see around the world.
This is how I believe it should happen in the United States.
What I'm basically saying is that
the 50 United States that we have
are very, very useful
when you're trying to win an election.
When you're out there campaigning
But, it tells you absolutely nothing
about how to properly govern America's geography
to be an economically competitive superpower.
Right, what we need is for these mega regions, if you will
that have certain common internal
economic characteristics like agriculture or industry
to be much more seamlessly connected to each other
and to the outside world.
They need to be built around urban economies at their core
and they need to be connected to each other
through freight rail corridors
high speed rail networks and so forth.
So, if you take this layering
of the natural economic geographies
these big patches and the urban clusters that are in white
that are gonna be the economic hubs
and then the infrastructural connectivity.
That's how you would turn The United States of America
into United City-States of America.
And that would be one, that would be far more efficient
far more viable, far more sensible
and certainly far more competitive.
The optimistic note that I want to end on
and that I end the book on is this idea that
we are actually returning to a fairly ancient model.
We are a coastal urban network civilization.
Right, a world in which people are more interested
in trade and commerce with each other than conquest.
And this is what I call
the Pax Urbanica, a peace among cities
in which, if we think about the way cities view the world
versus the way countries view the world.
Cities are interested in trade and connectivity
whereas, we think of countries being interested
in territorial aggrandizement.
And so, the more we move into a world
in which that mentality of inter-urban connectivity
in sharing lessons with each other, trading with each other
positive sum relations
the more peaceful ultimately, the entire world system can be.
But, the punch line really is that
if you want to have this world, you actually have to build it.
And it starts with, what we're doing today
and what we could do a lot more of.
Which is investing, first and foremost in connectivity.
Connectivity for countries, connectivity for cities
and connectivity for people.
And with that, I'll stop. Thank you so very much.
-( audience applause ) -Thank you.