Globalization has made our great cities incalculably richer but also increasingly divided and unequal. More than youth, ethnicity or even race, London’s riots are about class and the growing divide between the classes. This dynamic is not unique to London but is at work in many of the world’s great capitals. Instead of reducing and flattening economic distinctions, globalisation has made them sharper.”

To read more, check out Richard’s recent column in the Financial Times.

The United States has dropped off the list of the top 25 most globalized nations, according to the new Index of Globalization released today by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute. The U.S. slipped to 27th place overall and 43rd on more specific measures of economic globalization, according to the report. The report notes however that “As a large economy, a high proportion of [the U.S.’s] trade is internal, which means that [it] does not ‘need’ to be as globalized as small countries.”

The overall globalization of the world economy has also slowed as a result of the lingering economic crisis, according to the Index, which tracks trends in overall globalization as well as in three specific categories – economic, social and political globalization.

Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland took the top five spots on the overall Globalization Index, while Singapore ranks first in economic globalization. Switzerland took the top spot for social globalization, with Canada in fourth place, and France topped the list for political globalization.

With the help of my colleague Charlotta Mellander, I looked at the factors associated with the globalization of national economies across the 100 plus countries on the KOF Globalization Index.

Globalization is closely associated with the level of economic development. There is a considerable correlation (.81) between the Globalization Index and economic output (GDP per capita).

Post-industrial, knowledge-based economies are also more globalized. Globalization is closely correlated with human capital levels (.73) and the percentage of the workforce in professional, knowledge-based and creative jobs (.68).

Globalized nations boast higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction. There is a considerable correlation between the Globalization Index and happiness as measured via Gallup surveys (.73).

Globalization has slowed as a result of the economic crisis. High levels of unemployment, especially in the manufacturing industries, pressure governments to close off global trade and move in a more protectionist direction. The KOF Globalization Index suggests that such measures can work against a country’s interests. More globalized nations are wealthier and more knowledge-based, and their citizens are happier.

The Judgment Call section of today’s Financial Times asks:

Last week, Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch announced the company was interested in buying Alfa Romeo, the Italian brand. While at Fiat, chief executive Sergio Marchionne says the company is “Italian based but not an Italian company.” In the era of global business, does a company’s national identity matter?

Here’s my answer:

It depends who you are talking about.

For companies, nationality is becoming less important. Their products have to be in the major markets, no matter where they are. You need to source stuff where the capabilities and the prices are right. One thing I learned way back in the 1980s and 1990s, when I was studying the globalisation of auto manufacturing, is that it’s often harder to upgrade and transform existing plants at home than it is to set up not just new factories but whole new work systems in new places. For unions, nationality matters because factory jobs are tied to locations: it’s not as though existing workers can be transported abroad. Workers can benefit when foreign companies invest in new countries and generate new jobs overseas but often those companies prefer to operate without unions. Countries, meanwhile, worry that globalisation will hollow out their economies.

Domestic companies, politicians believe, are more inclined not just to create jobs but to invest in national projects. Maybe so, but foreign companies have considerable interest in making their offshore locations more productive and engaging local employees and communities more effectively. Corporate nationality is losing ground to globalisation. Those that try to prop it up only stand in the way of their own progress.

The rest is here.

Last week the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association (GERA) had its annual meeting in Santiago, Chile and launched the 2010 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) executive report. The annual meeting was held in a developing country for the first time. The meeting is a mixture of media events, planning meetings, and strategic decision-making. In addition, social events make this a welcome activity.

The 2010 GEM executive report, in addition to reporting on the state of entrepreneurship in the world, had sections on the economic crisis and social entrepreneurship. The main finding was that entrepreneurial activity had declined in the developed countries but not in the developing countries. In other words, do not look to Europe to lead the world in the future. As a founder of the Hungarian team, the so-called transition countries are not going to lead either. The labor force of Europe is in decline and, therefore, Europe and Japan are in no position to provide entrepreneurial leadership in the future as they age.

By the year 2050, most of the labor force in Europe will be aging and the under 40 labor force will be in the developing world according to my colleague Jack Goldstone at George Mason University. In other words, the creative, innovative and entrepreneurial talent will be in Brazil, Chile, India, China, and Indonesia. The developing world will have to provide the economic leadership for the market. While the world will be flat, hot, and crowded, the creative talent will also be in these places. GERA is uniquely positioned to measure and track the progress that the world is making in shifting the creative epicenter from Europe to Asia and South America.

This seminal meeting of the GERA represents the first step of the association in this transition. After spending the first 10 years of this decade trying to figure out if Denmark is more entrepreneurial than the United States, we are now shifting to measuring the entrepreneurial progress of the developing countries. As Richard Florida said to me a few years ago, the young are the same all over the world. If that is the case they will surely be the leaders in the future.

Most people think the biggest threat to globalization is mounting economic nationalism and trade protectionism. That may well be true. But in a thoughtful and provocative article in the Harvard Business Review, George Stalk argues that globalization faces another threat – a looming infrastructure crisis that is creating huge bottlenecks in the flow of global products and services.

As supply and distribution chains have become longer and more complex, companies have begun to realize that increased logistics costs can reduce or even eliminate the benefits of manufacturing where labor is cheap. The congestion and bottlenecks of a transportation system strained beyond capacity compound the problem, making supply chains seem even longer and more unpredictable.

There’s a lot of talk about improving transport times for people, but at this time of rapidly falling imports and exports, there’s not much talk of increasing capacity for goods. High fuel prices are not the only issue here. It’s also the other costs of congestion: higher cost of inventory for goods that are locked up longer in transit; the costs of uncertain, more variable transport times; and the inability to react to changes in consumer demand.

Stalk argues that while the crisis provides a temporary reprieve, the stimulus is not addressing this looming longer-run economic threat.

If pre-recession trends reappear when the economy recovers, lack of infrastructure capacity, in combination with rising oil prices, will constrain global trade and drive up costs. The U.S. stimulus package, with its focus on “shovel-ready” projects that quickly create jobs, will produce newly painted bridges and newly paved roads but is unlikely to address the capacity problem.

The June unemployment numbers do not look very pretty for the United States. After four months of improvements in the number of jobs lost, the numbers again increased to 467,000 up from 322,000 in May. The unemployment rate, now at 9.5 percent, is the highest in 26 years. The recession is entering its 20th month and will soon reach two years with little end in sight.

While the great recession of the 21st century grinds on, explanations for it continue to elude us. Some think that it is a depression and they may be right. I suggest that we have at least four issues on our plate that have emerged as a perfect story. The solutions to all are institutional. First, let’s start with the financial crisis. This financial crisis resulted from market failure. The lack of rules or what some like to call regulatory arbitrage, that is, working the rules led to the financial meltdown. We are still not out of the woods on this one because the rules have not been fixed. Without rules markets cannot work.

Second, we now have a global recession with falling demand and rising unemployment. A classic case of underused resources. The recession was in part caused by the financial crisis, but only in part. It is clear now that at least two interpretations are in order. First, it was a classic case of over-investment in housing. We have about two to three million too many houses. It will take about six years to work this off through population growth and attrition. This “inventory recession,” to use an old phrase, is nothing new, only the sector is – housing. The other interpretation is that it was caused by imbalances in the global economy between rich and poor countries. In either case, as Richard Florida pointed out with housing, or Business Week with global imbalances, new rules are needed.

Third, we have finally realized that we do indeed have a sustainability issue in the environment. It is both about the carbon footprint and about the type and amount of energy used. This is not a cause of our current financial and economic problems but it impacts it directly since it is about investment, and with a huge amount of uncertainty where to invest it is also putting a drag on the economy. Rules would help.

Finally, we are just realizing that globalization that started a few decades ago might be a dead end. It is a dead end not because the world does not want to globalize (most do) but because markets cannot work without rules. And in a global economy we need global rules. Here is the rub. All of the above problems in some way suffer from having a global economy without a set of global rules. When the last era of globalization ended at the dawn of the first world war, the rules that governed up to then also evaporated and it took decades to put them back in place after the second world war.

We are now into the second decade of the second globalization of the world economy. Until we are able to put the “rules of the game” in place markets, I am afraid the economy, and the financial sector, cannot be expected to lead to growth. The environmental rules are even more onerous. We just might need to start working on the rules of the game sooner rather than later. This seems like a task for the creative class. What is needed is talent and honesty in order to put a global structure in place where all can prosper. This is no small task.

Ed Glaeser asks: “If the world is so flat, then why are cities growing so quickly, especially in the third world?” He explains:

In the developing world, urbanization has often taken the form of exploding populations in megacities. Mumbai’s population increased to 19 million in 2007 from 10.8 million in 1985. Bangalore, the urban symbol of the flat world, has had its population double over two decades, to 6.8 million today from 3.4 million in 1985.

The growth of these cities and the continuing strength of older urban areas – like New York, London and Paris – is no accident. Globalization and new technologies attract people to big cities, by increasing the returns to urban proximity …

Globalization and technological change have increased the returns to being smart; human beings are a social species that get smart by hanging around smart people.

This powerful clustering force – identified by Jane Jacobs and Robert Lucas, among others – is making the world more geographically concentrated everyday.

Figuring out ways to adjust to it – especially how to address the huge costs being borne by people and places being left behind – remains one of the most pressing domestic and international public policy questions of our time.

Richard Florida will discuss economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural innovation at the Global City Forum in Abu Dhabi on April 7. Over 1,000 urban decision-makers from 250 cities will be gathered at this event.

Global City is the only international forum where public and private leaders exchange best practices and share sustainable urban strategies. This unique networking platform dedicated to mayors, urban planners, decision-makers and leaders, will be held in Abu Dhabi in April 2009 – for the first time in the Middle East.

What do you consider the greatest challenges of globalization and sustainability that face your city?

Rana and Richard Florida and event organizers, Reed Exhibitions

Global City, Abu Dhabi - Emrites Palace

Richard's representative from Abu Dhabi

Richard giving the morning keynote

Mr. Eid AlMazroi advisor to the chairman of the Department of Planning and Economy, Rana & Richard Florida

That is what Nouriel Roubini is calling it. He predicts widening financial contagion across the banking and financial systems, and a prolonged U-shaped recession of the US and global economies. Don’t count on deposit insurance, he says, the FDIC will go broke. Interestingly, he sees this as a signal of the demise of three other key pillars of post-war American life – the end of America’s global empire, the unravelling of the Bretton Woods global monetary system, and the decline of the suburban way of life. Martin Kenney calls for a global New Deal. I agree. It will also take a new global spatial fix which can overcome the limits of spiky globalization and provide a workable alternative to the McMansions and SUVs suburban model- not just new models for housing but for stimulating consumption in ways that bolster the creative economy.

The spiky world and the rise of the mega-region make place more important then ever before. But what if your place is not part of a mega-region or a spiky center? Two places our team has thought a great deal about are Australia – where Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane do not form a mega-region – and Scandinavia, where Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Helsinki are also too far apart. One idea is to deepen connective tissue and form “virtual” mega-regions of sorts.

U.S. Endowment takes on the even thornier issue of how rural areas can connect to spiky globalization which suggests “that individual rural communities will have an increasingly difficult time competing. Thus, the need to form ‘mini-regions’ built upon clustering of potential that if not ready to compete globally are vitally linked to mega-regions in a symbiotic relationship.”

Sounds reasonable to me: What do you think?