Cities, Geopolitics, and the International Legal Order Report and Thought Pieces

This workshop kicked off the Great Powers and Urbanization Project, or GPUP, a collaboration of global leaders in international and urban affairs. Members of the project include Perry World House, the University of Melbourne’s Connected Cities Lab, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the Argentine Council for International Relations (Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales). GPUP looks at how cities are taking on an increasingly prominent role on the world stage - pursuing their own policy priorities, developing their own foreign relations strategies, and building new peer networks to advocate for the issues that matter to them, sometimes contradicting or clashing with their national governments in the process.

Workshop Report

Click here to read the workshop report. 

Thought Pieces

Click the links below to read thought pieces from scholars and policy experts who attended the workshop to exchange ideas on this crucial topic.

Cities and International Law
Nadia Banteka, Assistant Professor at the Charles Widger School of Law at Villanova University

Smart City Networks: The New World Order for Innovation
Rhonda Binda, Esq., Vice President of Policy for Venture Smarter and Director of their Regional Smart Cities Initiatives 

Cities and International Lawyers Need to Start Talking to One Another
William Burke-White, Inaugural Director and Richard Perry Professor, Perry World House and Law Professor, University of Pennsylvania

An International Law Perspective on How to Best Leverage City Networks to Solve/Manage International Problems
Barbara Koremenos, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan

Cities in a World of States 
Charles S. Maier, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University

Urbanism Rearranged: Small Towns, Urbanisation and Climate Adaptation
Harvey Molotch, Emeritus Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and Sociology at New York University

Tracking the Trends in City Networking: A Passing Phase or Genuine International Reform?
Daniel Pejic, Ph.D., Researcher in the Connected Cities Lab at the University of Melbourne; Michele Acuto, Professor of Urban Politics and Director of the Connected Cities Lab at the University of Melbourne; Anna Kosovac, Lab Fellow at the Connected Cities Lab at the University of Melbourne

Foreign Relations and the City
Paul B. Stephan, John C. Jeffries, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia

Battle Smarts: Smart Cities Could Be the Next Battleground Between Cities and States
Poon King Wang, Director of the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at the Singapore University of Technology and Design

Cities as Refuge in the Age of Forced Mobility
Weiping Wu, Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP and Director of the M.S. Urban Planning Program