For Cities of the Future, Three Paths to Power

This post is part of a CityLab series on power—the political kind, the stuff inside batteries and gas tanks, and the transformative might of mass movements.

Since the end of World War II, world order has been defined by the sovereign nation state, international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, and treaty organizations like NATO. Increasingly, liberal economic exchange and democratic governance infused these institutions. The order they created has done much to define the shape of cities around the world. It has provided the technocratic expertise necessary to support the economic exchange at the heart of the “global city” and has facilitated the development and sharing of technologies that have altered how we look at cities from above.