It wasn’t so long ago that we thought the world was flat.  Globalization had leveled the playing field, technology spelled the death of distance, and people were fleeing the cities for the comfort of the suburbs. We’d reached the end of history. And social media could never, ever be a tool of social activism.

Taken collectively, these popular nostrums shaped a vision of an unreal world inhabited by billions of solipsists – where, as Blair Kamin of The Chicago Tribune recently described it, people “lived in lonely isolation, lured away from the public square by the seduction of Internet chatrooms.” But the lesson of Egypt—and of Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, Iran, and everywhere else that has been swept up in the wave of revolutionary activism—is quite the opposite. “The Web doesn’t supplant the public square,” Kamin declares, “It pushes people to it.”

Cities push us ever closer, enabling the rapid spread of new ideas.  This accelerates the flow of new technology, increases the rate of new business formation, and makes for vibrant artistic and cultural scenes. And those very same mechanisms that unleash our innovative and artistic energies also make cities veritable cauldrons, in which political energy and activism are pressurized and brought to a boil.

Consider the Boston Massacre of 1770, the Paris Commune of 1871, the October Revolution of 1917 in St. Petersburg, the Chicago Convention in 1968, the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, Cairo’s Tahrir Square last month, and many more—all of them were events of global consequence, but they were each the product of individual cities. “These uprisings aren’t just accidentally urban,” noted economist Edward Glaeser. “They would be unthinkable at low densities. Cities connect agitators, like Sam Adams and John Hancock. Riots require a certain kind of urban congestion; police power must be overwhelmed by a sea of humanity.”

The Middle East and the Arab World are highly urbanized and their rate of urbanization has increased substantially over the past several decades, according to data pulled together by my Martin Prosperity Institute team.  While it is true that Egypt has seen a much slower rate of urbanization than the rest of the world, as The New York Time’ David Leonhardt recently observed, Greater Cairo, which stretches to Alexandria and Suez, is the world’s second largest mega-region, with a population of more than 75 million people and an economic output of $91 billion.  The Tel Aviv-Amman-Beirut mega is the world’s 15^th largest, with more than 30 million people, making it bigger than the So-Cal mega surrounding Greater LA and economic output of $160 billion.

The map above shows the level of urbanization for the Middle East and the world.  2009 was the year the world went urban—for the first time, more than half of its total population was living in urban areas.  About eight in ten Americans live in urban areas, and roughly three-quarters of the citizens of EU countries.

Kuwait (98%), Qatar (96%), Israel (92%) are among the most urbanized nations in the world, while  Bahrain (89%), Lebanon (87%), Saudi Arabia (82%) are all more urbanized than the United States (82%). Jordan (78%), UAE (78%), Libya (78%) are slightly more urbanized than the OECD nations on average. Oman (72%), Iran (69%),Tunisia (67%), Iraq (66%) are two-thirds urbanized. Morocco (56%), and Syria (55%) are above the world average. Egypt, where just four in ten people live in urban areas (despite being home to the gargantuan Great Cairo mega), is the exception to the rule. The Middle East as a whole is 61 percent urbanized, while the level for the Arab nations is 56 percent.

The Middle East and Arab nations have also seen a startlingly fast pace of urbanization over the past several decades. The share of Middle Eastern people living in urban areas increased from 35 percent in 1960 to 60 percent in 2009, while urbanization in the Arab nations jumped from 30 to 56 percent.  Urbanization increased from slightly less than a third (32.8%) to slightly more than half (50.3%) of the world during the same period. The advanced nations increased more slowly, which makes sense since they started with a much higher level of urbanization to begin with; the U.S., for example, increased by just 12 percentage points, from 70 to 82 percent.

Middle Eastern nations have seen some of the largest jumps, as the graph above shows.  Three nations posted gains of more than 50 percentage points: Oman (55%), Saudi Arabia (51%) and Libya (50%); Lebanon (45%) and Iran (35%) also saw significant gains. Urbanization levels in Tunisia increased by 29 percentage points, and by 27 percentage points each in Jordan and Morocco.

Middle Eastern cities are also quite dense. Density is key because it is what causes to people to connect and the pot to stir. It enables new ideas—whether about technological innovations, new artistic or musical styles, or revolutionary memes— to move quickly through the population. These density statistics, compiled by the consulting firm Demographia, are eye-opening.  (One caveat: These data cover entire metros, so density in the center of the city is undoubtedly higher). Cairo has 9800 people per square kilometer. Yemen’s Sana is even denser with 11,100 sq/km, while Iran’s Qom, another hot spot, is home to 11,000 people per sq/km, and Tehran10,300. Amman, which has felt rumblings, has 7000 per sq/km. All of these cities have greater densities than Shanghai (6300) or London (5100). Riyadh has a density of 3000 people per sq/km. And Bahrain’s Al Manamah, a significant locus of unrest, has only 1700 people per sq/km, but it is still on a par with greater Chicago (1500 per sq/km).

Unrest requires urbanism. Cities push us together and accelerate the spread of political activism. The same forces that are making the world spiky are making it increasingly volatile as well.

But are the same factors at work today as they were in past revolutionary surges? Some are undoubtedly similar – throngs of disgruntled people have taken to the streets, questing for freedom and economic opportunity.  Others, like the use of social media from YouTube to Facebook and Twitter, are undoubtedly new and different.  Do the unfolding events of 2011 fit with our existing understanding of revolution or might they warrant updating?

By far the most influential and infamous account of revolution comes from Karl Marx. In The Communist Manifesto, authored with his benefactor and collaborator Frederich Engels and published in the real 1848, Marx argued that that revolutions are an inevitable and necessary outgrowth of economic development.  The rise of industry and of an emergent capitalist class upended the old feudal order while ushering in a new more dynamic but inherently unstable capitalist system. As the capitalist class rises to new heights, Marx wrote, the working class is simultaneously expanded and immiserated, sowing the seeds of the next revolutionary impulse and its own demise.

Revolution = size of working class, exploitation of working class, working class consciousness and organization  (working class papers, trade unions, labor parties).

Many alternative accounts of revolution have been proposed since Marx’s day. In nations where capitalism emerged early, the rising bourgeoisie was able to secure a power base independent of the aristocracy and usher in a process of gradual democratization, according to Barrington Moore classic, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Countries whose economies developed later were more likely to undergo abrupt transformations. Students played a key role in the revolutionary uprisings of 1968; the same era saw the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States and of the women’s and gay liberation, environmental, and anti-war movements in the advanced nations.  These “new social movements” came to be seen a new driving force behind political activism.

The uprisings of 2011 however owe much of their impetus to the working class and labor movements as well as young people and students, according to the Middle East expert Juan Cole. Rising unemployment rates, stagnant wages and falling living standards prompted blue-collar workers to return to the barricades.

But a new generation of techies, social media types, and digitally savvy professionals have also played a visibly important role. Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who became the public face of Egypt’s uprising, is the veritable archetype of this Creative Class, spanning science, technology and engineering professionals, management and business executives, doctors, health care professionals and lawyers, as well as arts, culture and media workers.  In an emotional interview recorded immediately after his release from detention, Ghonim pointed explicitly to the role that Facebook and YouTube music videos played in Mubarak’s ouster. “We’re the youth who loves Egypt,” he declared, “And we did this because we love Egypt.” Intellectuals and artists as well as students have long participated in revolutionary movements, but usually in subsidiary roles. This time creative class members are part of the vanguard.

In identifying the creative class role, I do not intend to diminish the role of unions and various other political, religious and social movements that have driven this and other seasons of revolution. I simply aim to call attention to this key factor that has become increasingly salient to the surge of revolutionary activity occurring today.

Using data from the International Labor Organization, the map below charts the percentage of the workforce in the creative class in the Middle East and around the world.

The highest percentages of the creative class –in the range of 40 to 45 percent – are found in wealthy, advanced nations like the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada.  Egypt’s creative class comprises roughly a third (33.1%) of its workforce, on par with the United States (34.8%). Only Israel – where the creative class makes up 40 percent of the workforce – has a higher creative class share in the Middle East.  The creative class looms larger than one might expect, numbering one in five workers in Saudi Arabia (23.2%), the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (22%), Qatar (21.8%), Syria (21.8%) and Algeria (21.4%). These levels are higher than in the rapidly growing nation of Brazil (18.4%) and roughly triple that of China (7.4%), the world’s second largest economy.

Not all countries collect and report data on their creative class and other workforce categories. These figures are lacking for Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, and Kuwait in the Middle East, as well as several dozen other countries in the rest of the world.  So I also use another closely related measure that is more systematically available for a larger group of nations – the level of human capital – the percentage of the young adults engaged in post-secondary or “tertiary” education. This measure is closely related to creative class workforce (with a substantial statistical correlation of .75).

The map above shows the human capital levels for the Middle East and the world. The top ranked nations on this measure – Korea, Finland, the US, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, and, perhaps surprisingly, Greece – have more than 75 percent of their young adults enrolled in tertiary education. For advanced nations like the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Japan the figure is 55 to 60 percent. Israel is the highest ranked Middle Eastern nation on this measure (57%).  But several other Middle Eastern nations are also quite high, notably Libya (53%) and Lebanon (49%). Tertiary enrollment levels are higher in the West Bank (38%) and Jordan (35%) than they are in Hong Kong (34%). And tertiary enrollment levels are above 25% in Bahrain (31%), Egypt (29%), Tunisia (28%), and Saudi Arabia (27%).  Tertiary enrollment in Iran (24%) and the UAE (23%) are roughly the same as Brazil (23%).

Typically, creative class and human capital levels are very closely associated with economic development. Nations with substantial creative class shares and levels of high human capital tend to be among the richest in the world. But for many Middle East nations, the standard of living is lower than their creative class and human capital levels would seem to warrant. This gap is a signal of unrealized economic potential. It can help account for the pent-up social stresses that stem from a country’s inability to translate the talent, creativity, and ambition of its smartest citizens into greater levels of economic development and well-being for its citizens. This frustration is pronounced not just among those who are unemployed or locked in dead-end jobs, but also among those who do have flourishing careers with leading global organizations— Ghonim being a clear case in point.

With the help of my colleague Charlotta Mellander, I developed a simple metric to gauge this.  We created simple ratios, dividing the creative class percentage of the workforce on the one hand, and human capital levels on the other, by the level of economic output (GDP) per capita.

Revolution = size of creative class, the unrealized potential of creative class (ratio of creative class to GDP), creative class consciousness and organization (internet and social media access).

These measures are not perfect. Still, the results are intriguing and shed light on an important, heretofore neglected factor in revolutionary movements.

The map above shows the first of these ratios – the creative class to GDP ratio – for the Middle East and the world. Egypt ranks 7^th overall on this measure, with 33 percent of its workforce in the creative class and a GDP of just $1,620 dollars per person.  The West Bank-Gaza Strip ranks 6^th – with 24 percent of its workforce in the creative class and just $1,056 in GDP per capita.  Compare that to, say, Hong Kong, where the creative class numbers 34% and per capita GDP is $32,250, or Austria with its 35& creative class share and its per capita GDP of $25,940. The ratio is also considerable in Syria (22%, $1271), Algeria (21%, $2134), and Iran (16%, $2023).  But the worst ratios of all are found in nations outside the Middle East:  Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Ukraine, Mongolia, and Pakistan. China’s ratio is about the same as Croatia’s, Slovakia’s and Jamaica’s.  This measure does not capture everything.  The UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, which has been the scene of significant unrest, all register relatively small ratios.

The map below charts the second of the measures, the ratio of human capital to GDP, for the Middle East and the world.  Several Middle Eastern nations post high ratios – West Bank-Gaza Strip (39% human capital, $1,096 per capita GDP), Egypt (29%, $1,617), Jordan (35%, $2249), Tunisia (28%, $2526), and Iran (24%, $2,023).  While Iraq has a much lower level of human capital, its ratio is also quite high (15%, $681).  Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, and Morocco post moderate but still considerable ratios. As with creative class share, the worst ratios are found outside the Middle East, in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, Mongolia and the Ukraine.

China ranks 53^th about the same as Uganda, Colombia and Tunisia.  As with the creative class ratio, this measure has its limits.  Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain all register relatively low ratios.

I don’t pretend that these measures offer a comprehensive theory of revolution. Revolutions are infrequent and relatively unique events, each of them the products of many interacting social, political, economic, and cultural forces, as sizeable literatures in history, comparative sociology, and political science have documented  (Daniel Little summarizes some of this literature, notably the seminal Dynamics of Contention by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, over at his blog Understanding Society). And then there are nations like Bahrain, where revolutionary uprisings occur alongside relatively high levels of wealth: Money, after all, does not necessarily buy happiness, contentment, or freedom.

Americans may have an allergic revolution to the notion of class, but it’s time to put it back at the center of the conversation about revolution.  The working class has certainly played a much larger role in the Middle East uprisings than is commonly credited, but so too has the digital savvy, social media skills, and activism of the creative class.

Alongside the creative class and human capital, there is one more factor that plays a key role both in revolutionary unrest as well as economic development.   In my next post, I take a close look at the role played by cities, urbanisation and geographic proximity.

The Iranian Presidential Election will be held this Friday. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, Hossein Mousavi, a moderate and progressive candidate (by Iranian standards) has emerged as a serious contender to the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

While his “Green Revolution,” at first seemed nothing more than a Sisyphean struggle by a group of young moderate Iranians against a totalitarian and despotic government – destined for failure despite their greatest efforts – the winds of change have dramatically and suddenly tipped in Mousavi’s favor and, at this point, it’s anyone’s race.

Iran’s state-controlled media has given Mr. Mousavi no air-time, the government has banned his party from hosting peaceful rallies in sports stadiums and other public venues, and those rallies which have occurred spontaneously in the street have been met with hostilities from government officials. Still, his candidacy built momentum.

So how did Mr. Mousavi, whose supporters promise “a new greeting to the world,” emerge as a serious contender to Mr Ahmadinejad despite a state-wide government campaign to quell his movement? The answer: FACEBOOK. Mousavi’s supporters – mostly young people and educated urban dwellers – have taken to the Web, garnering support and enthusiasm on Facebook and on blogs, posting videos of their candidate on YouTube, and organizing impromptu street rallies by mass-texting fellow supporters literally on the fly. The result: a highly organized, energetic, and sophisticated force for change.

Mousavi supporter Emad Mortazavi, a 24-year-old sociology student, said, “Last week, there was suddenly this feeling that it was possible, that Mousavi could get enough votes. Social-networking sites and text-messaging have played a big role in spreading the message.”

In typical form, Ahmadinejad blocked Facebook in May in an attempt to silence his opposition, but to no avail (it was opened back up three days later). In the end, Iran’s youth proved more tech-savvy than anyone in Ahmadinejad’s government.

In an uncanny mirror image of the U.S. election last year, it appears the Net-Generation – people born between 1980 and 1996 – may once again anchor the winning candidate by embracing progressive attitudes and exploiting the power of the internet to collaborate and organize for their candidate. Evidence of a seismic demographic shift, the precipitous rise of Mousavi proves that young Iranians are a force to be reckoned with.

The AFP reports:

“With more than 60 percent of Iranians born after their nation’s Islamic revolution in 1979, the under-30 vote will be crucial in next week’s election in which hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being challenged by three fiercely critical rivals.

Several analysts predict a high urban youth turnout in favour of former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi…Tehran has been gripped by a new fashion frenzy ahead of the June 12 vote, with scores of teenagers and 20-somethings sporting green wristbands, scarves and T-shirts.”

Iranian youth ultimately face many of the same problems as young people in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. In a time of economic turmoil they want a candidate who can answer their questions and who can appeal to their better instincts; not some religious zealot who spends most of his time demonizing the Western World and threatening the extinction of its neighbors. The DailyKos writes,

“The economy is a key issue, and many young people with college degrees cannot find jobs or acceptable living arrangements in Tehran and other major cities…the ruling elites cannot ignore the desires of such an enormous percentage of the nation for long. Iran is in for some major shifts due to demographics alone.”

Tomorrow, the Iranian people will take to the polls. The sun may rise Saturday morning on a very different looking Middle East.