In the twenty years following September 11, the world seems not to have understood the lesson of that event. In fact, there have been no substantial political investments on the central theme of global rules to bring planetary governance towards objectives of sustainability, equity and security. In global forums, discussions and proclamations abound while, in reality, the world is on fire.
Today everyone has (or should have) an understanding of the complexity of crises, of their interconnectedness. We live in the urgency of climate change, to safeguard global health, to govern mass migration and human mobility, to underline the demographic factor, to overcome inequalities, to “save” liberal democracies: all this, however, becomes possible if the great proclamations of the various G7, G20, etc. descend into the different realities in the evolving worlds.
Today, in addition to the risk in metamorphosis, we introduce two further elements: the importance of the human factor (complex and often unpredictable as it is in the nature of each of us) and the centrality of the glocal where.
In essence, it is a question of placing the where life of each of us takes place at the center of our reflection: if we are citizens of the world, first of all we are citizens in our territories. This is the reason why we believe that cities are the places where a glocal project for humanity can be rethought.
If, as Carlo Ratti said when interviewed by The Science of Where , cities and not states can be seen from space, the interest in cities is geostrategic.
It is in cities, in fact, that technologies evolve to organize and govern (considering risks and opportunities) public services and coexistence (the science of where); it is in the cities that international relations of the third millennium are evolving, relations of glocal proximity that take into account the human factor in an open where.