MABRY: You’ve argued that the digital revolution threatens the pre-eminence of our greatest cities. How has Sept. 11 affected your views? KOTKIN: I think Sept. 11 will drive the processes more quickly. In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack, there was a visceral drive for people and businesses to migrate to places where they feel safer. Cities, which have enjoyed a tremendous renaissance in the U.S., in particular–but in some places in Europe as well, like London–will suffer from fears of insecurity. In places like Rotterdam and Hamburg, with large Muslim populations, people will feel less comfortable.
But in this new world order, dominated by old animosities, do you still place the same importance on “Nerdistans” and techies? Doesn’t that world seem suddenly overshadowed? The new defense economy will be completely suburban. It was the Nerdistans, the suburbs, that were the home of technologies [like cruise missiles and weapons systems]. The money in the commercial sector will start flowing to defense, just as it flowed from defense to the commercial sector [after the cold war]. And technology is the only answer the West has to this threat: more surveillance technology, more high-tech components.
What effect will Sept. 11 have on European and Asian cities? Europe has a particular dilemma in that its largest immigrant groups tend to be Muslim. European cities, particularly British cities, have to be on the alert. I would also be very concerned in Germany that the large communities of Muslims and Germany’s cooperation with the U.S. would make them a target. Ultimately, this is not just a war on the United States. It will be a war on Europe. If Japan takes a role in helping the U.S., its cities could be targeted as well.
But technology is also vulnerable to terrorism. That’s why you’ll see the creation of a lot of redundant systems. One of the things that emerged after the World Trade Center disaster is that many records were being kept in other places.
In your book “Tribes,” you detailed the link between race, religion, identity and group success in the global economy. Have certain religions and ethnicities been excluded from globalization, hence their rage? I think they’ve excluded themselves. For instance, the Palestinians had great potential as a diaspora, but rabid fundamentalism sapped that. A lot of these suicide bombers are well-educated [Saudis and Egyptians]. You have to think that God gave the Arabs this enormous oil wealth and they have failed to use it, while other groups like the ethnic Chinese and the Indians, with less per capita income, have been much more successful.
Would successful integration into the global economy have lessened the likelihood of the attacks on the World Trade Center? If the rise of a class of educated Arabs and Muslims had been such that they looked upon the World Trade Center and the West as partners in their ascendancy, they wouldn’t have [carried out these acts]. But at a time when cities are becoming more globalized and cosmopolitan, Arab cities are becoming more localized–after removing the Jews and Europeans, now Christians are leaving. What should be incubators of cosmopolitan thinking in the Arab world are becoming incubators of fundamentalism and intolerance. They are becoming less diverse.
Yet you’re not a pessimist. No, I think we’ll get through this. You could see a “Blade Runner” future where people live in high-tech, high-security communities on the margins [of cities], but I’m optimistic societies will cope with this. They will change, but come out of this still urban peoples. Part of the way cities will reclaim themselves is to become places of pilgrimage, where people rediscover their history. That’s what cities can provide as we disperse into places that look largely the same–and visual stimulus.
Will we all be clamoring to live in suburban Atlanta and Lyons? That is the danger. Cities will still attract creative people, people without kids. But they are going to have to rethink what they’re about and how they’re going to expand in the future.
