If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities

Can cities solve the biggest problems of the twenty-first century better than nations? Is the city democracy’s best hope?

In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time—climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns, and people—the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big, too interdependent, too divisive for the nation-state. Is the nation-state, once democracy's best hope, today democratically dysfunctional? Obsolete? The answer, says Benj...