Global Cities

“When you look at a city, it's like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.”
- Hugh Newell Jacobsen

The concept of the nation state is only about a century old. Historically Western civilization has been ruled over by either city-states or Empires. We speak of "ancient Greece" but there was not a single Greek culture or government - instead the cities of Athens, Sparta, Corinth, etc. battled between themselves for supremecy with the victor making slaves of the losers. It's to the Greek's credit that they could unite and defeat the armies of the massive Persian empire but internal warfare left them weak when Alexander the Great swept through and conquered the Greeks as the first step in his Empire building.

The world map comprised of "nations" is a consequence of the Paris Peace Treaty of World War 1. The Austria-Hungarian Emprire was broken up into states. The British Empire and others remained (for awhile) but they "promised" to "educate" their subject colonies towards independence. That promise was not kept - it took Ghandi and massive peaceful rebellion for India to win independence. But the direction of history was clear in the decades after WWI - the age of Empires was over.

Since WWI I'm not aware of any two states merging - yes the US gained territory with Alaska and Hawaii, but the trend over the past 100 years has been the break-up of nations. Korea - North and South, Czechoslovakia - into the Czech and Slovak Republics, Yugoslavia - into many parts, Soviet Union - broken into many parts. For the 21st century an article at ForeignPolicy.com states that "The age of nations is over. The new urban age has begun."  It notes that the world is returning to a governance model where cities rule.

"More than half the world lives in cities, and the percentage is growing rapidly. But just 100 cities account for 30 percent of the world's economy, and almost all its innovation. ... New York City's economy alone is larger than 46 of [the] sub-Saharan Africa's economies combined. Hong Kong receives more tourists annually than all of India. ... cities are the real magnets of economies, the innovators of politics, and, increasingly, the drivers of diplomacy. ... This new world of cities won't obey the same rules as the old compact of nations; they will write their own opportunistic codes of conduct, animated by the need for efficiency, connectivity, and security above all else

"Then there are the megacities, superpopulous urban zones that are worlds unto themselves but that -- for now -- still punch below their weight class economically: Think Lagos, Manila, or Mexico City. When Tokyo in 1980 became the first metropolitan area to reach a population of 20 million, the figure seemed almost unimaginable. Now we need to get used to the idea of nearly 100 million people clustered around Mumbai or Shanghai."

Bottom Line

Look at a satellite map of the world at night. The cities are quite apparent and dominant. You don't see nation boundaries from satellites.