CEO and Senior Fellow Reuben Abraham wrote an article for the World Economic Forum with Robert Muggah, Co-founder, Igarape Institute and SecDev Group. Excerpts:

"Cities, not nation states, are the dominant form of human civilization in the 21st century. Humanity transitioned from a rural to a primarily urban species - homo urbanis – at breathtaking speed. In the early 1800s, less than 3% of the world's population lived in cities; today, more than half of the global population is urban and by 2050, the proportion will rise to three quarters.

There are thousands of small and medium-sized cities along with more than 30 megacities and sprawling, networked metropolitan areas — conurbations — with 15 million residents or more. Yet despite these massive transformations in how people live and interact, our international affairs are still largely dictated by nation states, not cities. This is neither fair nor tenable. 

Cities are beginning to flex their muscles on the international stage. They are already displacing nation states as the central nodes of the global economy, generating close to 80% of global GDP. Cities like New York and Tokyo are bigger in GDP terms than many G-20 countries."

Read the full article here.