The return of city-state geopolitics

"For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion." - United Nations Population Fund

http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2007/english/introduction.html

Histogram of the world population. Chart is organized by dividing nation-states into categories based on their population. Data obtained from data from http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbsprd
on 27 Nov 2007

The world is beginning to shape into an entirely different environment, and with that, a whole new way of doing politics.

In the very beginning of human civilization, there was the rivalry of competing city-states for global resources. Whether it was Persepolis vs Babylon , Athens vs Sparta, or Xi amen vs Xi'an. At some point after the invention of the printing press, the old loyalties of city-states fell to the rising tide of nations, and nation-states eventually dominated the geo-political scene thereafter.

The transition period was arguably characterized by competing religion-states, and elements of the religious alliances still remain in today's nation-state rivalry.

In modern times, as the world has thrown itself into a whole new level of connection, global consciousness, and living environment, a new dawn of geo-politics is emerging.

Citizens are re-organizing themselves into urban areas and with their migration they are also shifting their political boundaries. Across the globe, the political powers are shifting to the city-state levels, as massive federal nation-states such as Russia, India, and China, are seeing their political power challenged by the small but strong city-states such as Singapore and Kuwait, which are hardly visible from a world map.

The breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union are signs that in today's urban world, bigger no longer means better. Small city-states are starting to realize that survival is often easier when you have a smaller population and area to manage.

At the same time though, there are also examples of sovereignty going in the opposite direction. Agglomerations of massively large continental trade unions such as the EU and African Union demonstrate the growing trend towards larger sovereign territories.

Two diverging patterns are emerging, but even within these agglomerated trade unions, sovereignty is often divided between the unions, nation-states, and province level administrative divisions (city-states).

All of these political developments are further complicated by the political remnants of the days of religion-states such as the HRE and Islamic Caliphate.


The question is:

As political power begins to shift

upwards from nation-state to trade-unions, and

downwards from nation-states to city-states,

In the future battle for global resources, where will the ultimate sovereignty lie?

The large global trade unions, or the small but mighty city-states?

Global governance and global sovereignty has already began, and will only continue to strengthen if modern technological trends continue. However, will the ultimate sovereignty lie at the global level, trade-union level, or city-state level?