The end of empire and the age of cities

We argue here that the historical concept of an empire with its top-down governance of nation-states that fall under its influence as well as the strict militarist organisation that keeps empires intact, began to weaken as the modern era gained pace. From the Renaissance in Europe and the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 19th century, population began to grow exponentially while in this current century, it appears as though most of the world’s population will be urbanised, that is, living in cities of one size or another by the year 2100. As part of this massive decentralisation of urban life has come much more local control with the seeds of democracy being nurtured in many places, in cities, that in the past have been under the yolk of empire. Here we will explore how empires have traditionally evolved using simple measurements of their area and population over the last 5000 years and then we will supplement this discussion with the way cities have come to dominate nation-states since the industrial revolution began some nearly 300 years ago. The implications that we draw from this discussion about how democracies will evolve are tentative at best but the evidence so far suggests that the number of cities, their size distribution, and their densities are key determinants of the degree to which our future urban world will be more democratic than autocratic.