Abstract
At first glance, the impact of cities on international systems may seem to be a trivial, or at least a marginal, subject—particularly when compared to factors of such overwhelming importance as the $400 billion annual military expenditures of the national governments of the world. But the subject becomes more interesting when we consider the fact that 38 % of the world’s population lives in cities (Population Reference Bureau 1976).
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Notes
- 1.
This text was first published as: “The Impact of Cities on International Systems,” in Krishna Kumar (ed.), Bonds Without Bondage: Explorations in Transcultural Cooperation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1979. Also published in EKISTICS, Vol. 44, No. 264, November 1977, 243 253, and in Polish in Studia Nauk Politycznych (Studies in Political Sciences). The permission to republish this text was granted on 24 September 2012 by the University of Hawaii Press.
- 2.
This is, of course, a partial fiction, to the extent that the United Nations system has a diversity of agencies concerned with a diversity of issues. Across this range of issues there is a variety of “nation-state actors” for each nation state, sometimes responsive to different interests and, particularly in larger countries, having conflicting and sometimes even contradictory policies.
- 3.
These ideas are developed in greater detail in Alger (1977).
- 4.
Unfortunately, space does not permit presentation of data from Watanuki (1976)
- 5.
For an intensive analysis and evaluation of selected Sister City programs, see David Horton Smith, Ann LeRoyer, and Valerie Kreutzer, “U.S. Sister City Programs and International Understanding,” sponsored by the Town Affiliation Association of the U.S. (Washington, D.C.: Center for a Voluntary Society, February, 1974). For an analysis of a program relating Jaipur and Calgary, see T. K. N. Unnithan, “Sociological Implications of Town Twinning as a Transnational Programme with Reference to a Case Study of the Twinning of the Cities of Jaipur and Calgary,” ISA VHIth World Congress of Sociology, Toronto, Canada, August 19-25,1974.
- 6.
The 1968 Yearbook of International Organizations lists seventeen other organizations concerned with cities. Nine of these have a regional focus, such as Europe (3), Inter-American (3), Nordic, Ibero-American, and Commonwealth. Eight, including some of the regional ones, have a specific issue focus, such as planning, hygiene, underground town planning, conferences, development, statistics, and engineering. United Towns links those cities involved in Sister City (Town Twinning) programs. All of these organizations emphasize contact and exchange between towns with common cultures or common problem interests.
- 7.
The convention brought together over two hundred representatives of sixty periphery regions and countries of the Council of Europe: Apulia, Aquitaine, Basilicata, Bavaria, Land of Berlin, Brittany, Corsica, Cyprus, Emilia-Romagna, England, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Greece, Land of Hambourg, Iceland, Ireland, Languedoc-Roussillon, Marche, Midi-Pyrenees, Lower Normandy, North Jutland, Norway, Pays de la Loire, Poitou-Charentes, Sardinia, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Scotland, Sicily, Veneto, Wales.
- 8.
Council of Europe, “Galway Declaration Unanimously Adopted on 16 October 1975,” First Convention of the Authorities of European Peripheral Regions, Galway, Ireland, 14-16 October 1975, p. 1. For a far-ranging set of papers on periphery regions, see Institute of International Sociology, Gorizia, Boundaries and Regions: Explorations in the Growth and Peace Potential of the Peripheries, ed. Raimondo Strassoldo (Trieste: LINT, 1973).
- 9.
For an application of the approach of this chapter to the third world and third world relations with the industrialized world, see Alger (1978).
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Alger, C.F. (2014). The Impact of Cities on International Systems. In: The UN System and Cities in Global Governance. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice(), vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00512-6_3
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