Cities on the Prowl | Citiscope Cities in the modern world are beginning to share some features with the city-states of millennia past — communicating, trading, competing. But they’re two differences: Today it’s nation states, not city-states, that occasionally go to war. And unlike the walled cities that harbored flourishing trade in Medieval Europe, today there are literally thousands of cities on the rise, and looking outward in search not of silk and spices, but rather sources of finance, global talent, and most of all, good ideas. But the search for knowledge isn’t always easy. And there can be resistance — for example the short-sightededness of journalistic watchdogs who see in mayoral travel only junkets, not fruit-bearing study of better and smarter practices elsewhere. But here’s the big news that really counts. It’s that the 500 largest cities on the planet are sending delegations to visit each other, repeatedly and consistently every year, on the order of thousands of study trips annually. The cities are selected carefully, so that visitors may acquire valuable knowledge to speed improvements back home. 

Cities on the Prowl | Citiscope

Cities in the modern world are beginning to share some features with the city-states of millennia past — communicating, trading, competing. But they’re two differences: Today it’s nation states, not city-states, that occasionally go to war. And unlike the walled cities that harbored flourishing trade in Medieval Europe, today there are literally thousands of cities on the rise, and looking outward in search not of silk and spices, but rather sources of finance, global talent, and most of all, good ideas. But the search for knowledge isn’t always easy. And there can be resistance — for example the short-sightededness of journalistic watchdogs who see in mayoral travel only junkets, not fruit-bearing study of better and smarter practices elsewhere. But here’s the big news that really counts. It’s that the 500 largest cities on the planet are sending delegations to visit each other, repeatedly and consistently every year, on the order of thousands of study trips annually. The cities are selected carefully, so that visitors may acquire valuable knowledge to speed improvements back home. 

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What’s one major consequence of a city becoming a booming economic center? Increased traffic that leads to mind-numbing, stop-and-go commutes. IBM surveyed drivers in 20 of the world’s metropolises to see which city’s drivers experienced most traffic-related woes. Its Commuter Pain Index takes into account factors such as time drivers spent stuck in traffic, high gas prices, stress and anger caused by long commutes, and even instances where the specter of a bumper-to-bumper drive pushes drivers to cancel trips. Check out the results here.

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