ABSTRACT
The catalytic pressure of technological change has moved cities around the world to form integrated and data-driven networks to optimise how to tackle the greater impact transnational challenges are having on dense, urban environments – from climate change, to pandemics, to terrorism – in coordination. The rise of nationalism, populism and great power rivalry is a distraction to cities, who are putting out proverbial fires every day, for whom the ‘international’ and ‘national’ can no longer be neatly separated, but whose institutions remain administrative institutions that are ill-prepared to tackle the plethora of challenges at the speed and scale at which they arrive at the city line. As a practical alternative – not with duplicative intent – cities have formed issue-based diplomatic networks. They are valuable because they offer an additional, potentially alternative web of diplomacy, the elements of which (data gathering, foresight projections, trust in public action) which could be put in the service of national objectives – data-based. This chapter will trace the development of networked metrodiplomacy as a particular outgrowth of sub-national diplomacy. Two examples – C40 and Voluntary Local Review – will highlight the capacity of organised cities, powered by data-derived metrics derived through digital sources, to shape multinational decision-making trust-based, practical and pragmatic in addressing global and local challenges.
