what if the big cities start acting on global problems?
There is an assumption that many problems are so big and complex and cross-border (think climate change) that they cannot be solved by a single country, or by a group of countries, and that a sort of global governance is the only possible vehicle for solving them. Letizia Moratti, the new mayor of Milan, Italy, has a different idea – and it’s one of the best ideas I’ve heard recently. Some of those problems, she says, are actually very difficult to solve at a global level, because they involve tough policies that get delayed, drawn-out, weakened, compromised by negotiations among national and within supranational institutions. So, instead of taking the problems to a broader stage, what about taking them to a narrower one: that of the city? What if the big cities of the world started developing projects and agreements among themselves to solve some of the world’s problems? “The big cities have today a strategic role in the global context”, she said the other day to the Science and Techn
