How Cities May Remain Stable Social Structures Through the Collaborative Age

A post on Quartz raises the issue: ‘Megacities, not nations, are the world’s dominant, enduring social structures‘. It is true that cities in general have shown substantial reisilience to history and changes in political regimes and economic activity.

Will that remain the same through the Fourth Revolution into the Collaborative Age? There is a lot of speech on the possibilities of working remotely from the countryside. Mobility increases constantly. We don’t need so much to meet face to face to exchange and share ideas.

At the same time, cities remain unique melting pots of ideas, meeting points for connection and have quite a unique scale factor for enabling face-to-face meetings and teamwork with minimum time loss and cost. They are also linked to long distance transportation hubs which are not going to disappear soon. I believe that teamwork will remain a decisive factor for value production in the future, therefore cities will probably remain a fixture. However as they will drain ever increasing territories they may become fewer and further between.