What Can a Foreign Minister Do For a City?

This week, representatives from United Nations member states will gather in Quito, Ecuador for Habitat III to discuss a global agenda around sustainable urbanization. The following week, representatives from cities around the world will gather in Miami for CityLab 2016 discuss urban innovation. Although there will be some overlap in the participation of both events, it’s still worth asking what role foreign ministries have to play in urban innovation.

Cities are rising powers, as their populations, economic production and carbon emissions indicate. This rise is sometimes coupled, in a zero-sum logic, with observations on the diminished stature of the nation-state but the dichotomy is false. Cities will continue to rise, and nation-states will continue to be at the forefront of managing the norms and structures that have undergirded international security, economic growth and development since World War II.