Currents:Book Review—The World Is Not Flat GILL IAN RICE

Brugmann, Jeb. Welcome to the Urban Revolution:How Cities Are Changing the World. BloomsburyPress, 2010. 368 pp.ISBN: 978-1596915664 (paperback). $18.00.

Kessler, Eric H., & Wong-MingJi, Diana J. CulturalMythology and Global Leadership. Edward Elgar,2009. 390 pp.ISBN: 978-1847204035 (hardcover). $170.00.

Clark, Francesco. Walking Papers: The AccidentThat Changed My Life and the Business That GotMe Back on My Feet. Hyperion, 2010. 240 pp.ISBN: 978-1401323431 (hardcover). $23.99.

Flying across Ireland and England toward Amster-dam on a clear night, I use the patterns of orangelights to follow our path, trying to identify whichcities are below. It’s hard to imagine the England ofmy parents’ wartime childhood, when all was darkand on evening walks they identified stars and of-ten marveled at meteors. From space at night, thenatural biomes of deserts, polar regions, and forestsare hidden in solar shadow. Instead, one sees vastareas of light: dots, dense clusters, or long bands oflight that are evidence of the urban biome we arecreating.

Jeb Brugmann, in Welcome to the Urban Revolu-tion, labels this urban biome “the City,” a mega-geography of what has until now been called,abstractly, globalization. He describes urbanizationas “the substratum of globalization itself, a restruc-turing of the basic geography of human opportu-nity.” Brugmann’s text explores globalization in itstangible form, as it rests on the bedrock structureof the world’s growing cities and how they in-teract in the emerging global City system. This is

important for executives making investment deci-sions about optimal locations and place-networks.There is also an essential role for corporations toplay in the future development of cities.

Half the world lives in an urban setting today. In1950, 29 percent of people did so. In 2050, expertsproject this figure to be about 70 percent. What arethe implications? Take Arum, a migrant from ruralIndia to the city of Madurai. He focuses on schoolwhile the rest of his family and many other rural mi-grants toil at brick making. He has ambitions. Brug-mann observes father and son. Arum has an easy,alert gait that is different from the deliberate, spar-ing walk of the father: “It is the walk of a differentculture.” Culture is central to the anti-immigrationdebate in the United States, to riots like the Urumqiand Tehran uprisings in 2009, and to the success ofcity renewal in Barcelona.

Eric Kessler and Diana Wong-MingJi present a freshunderstanding of culture in Cultural Mythology andGlobal Leadership. Organized according to nationsrather than regions, cities, or neighborhoods as inthe Brugmann text, Cultural Mythology and GlobalLeadership likewise calls for a different kind anddepth of analysis to tackle business, political, andsocial problems. The focus is on mythology as a wayto know cultures. This helps us to understand the in-habitants of cities: the elites, the planners, the middleclass, and the migrants. Kessler and Wong-MingJiask: how do the myths that underlie societal valuesand visions impact global leadership? Because lead-ership is inexorably intertwined with culture, themythological analysis can help us appreciate lead-ership within and across cultures. It’s not an easytask, however: “grasping mythology is like reachingup into the clouds to capture the droplets of rain.”

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In spite of a plethora of studies, the human abilityto work effectively and relate to one another acrosscultures remains an enduring challenge.

Consider the disdain for migrants to the City andthe view that they are a drain on resources andcause innumerable problems. Brugmann reports thatstudies in Colombia, Guangzhou, South Africa, andMorocco suggest there is something about the mo-tivation or quality of the migrant that affords themgreater success in avoiding unemployment. More es-tablished urbanites forget the enterprising mission ofthe migrant; they misjudge his/her tenacity and in-novative temperament. To the extent that they denythe migrant rights to the City—to its jobs, prop-erty markets, basic urban services, education, andsecurity—they are encouraging the organization ofmillions into parallel, informal cities, and under-ground economies, opines Brugmann.

Not only are migrants discouraged from achievingtheir dreams, but often so are members of anotherkind of culture: the disabled. Walking Papers byFrancesco Clark is a case study in tenacity, determi-nation, and leadership. Experiencing a spinal cordinjury at the age of 23, Clark explains that he was“thrust into another existence.” What he learnedsince his accident is that “whether you’re disabledor able-bodied, you cannot define yourself by theexpectations of others.” He felt like an able-bodiedperson who happened to be sitting in a wheelchair,but just as people often fail to understand those ofother foreign cultures and stare at what is new or dif-ferent, so Clark felt self-conscious in public and thatall eyes turned in his direction. A significant changeoccurred when he was invited to contribute to anadvisory committee for people with disabilities inhis local community. This was his first opportunityto contribute to society by associating with othersin a network.

New migrants in cities around the world leveragetheir power of urban association. For example,Punjabis control the taxi industry in New York City

and the trucking industry in Toronto and SouthOntario. The Cubans in Miami form a power elite.The ways that people associate are shaped by manyinfluences, which include inherited traditions, socialroutines, and motivations to meet and collaborate.The possibilities of association are shaped by theefficiency with which people can interact. Networkefficiencies arise from the design of buildings andmix of land use in city environments; these canbe modeled using complex approaches. Networkefficiencies also spread from city to city throughurban infrastructure. Another dynamic enters theequation: speed of association, which is achieved byshipping, transit, and air travel systems, as well asby the telephone and Internet. These speed the wayat which dense networks can be established andlink individual cities into a functioning, extended(global) City. It is no surprise that the Chinese gov-ernment, to postpone revolution in its fast-growingcities, treats control of the Internet as a strategicchallenge. Likewise, officials in the United ArabEmirates have declared BlackBerry smartphones apotential threat to national security because users’data is stored overseas, where local laws don’tapply, possibly making it harder for authorities tomonitor the data (“UAE Says BlackBerry Is Poten-tial Security Threat,” 2010). India is also seekingcontrol over data transfer for security reasons.

The Internet provided Clark with both powerand speed of association as he leveraged his en-trepreneurial skills to distribute, both in the UnitedStates and overseas, skin care products he designed.Just like Arum in India, his desire to contribute to so-ciety and to improve his position was facilitated byhis being proactive and having access to a network.Do such transnational networks supercede the im-portance of culture? Not according to Brugmann, orto Kessler and Wong-MingJi.

Brugmann defines “urbanism” as a way of develop-ing, using, and living in the city in compatible waysto make its economics, politics, social life, and ecol-ogy coherent with consensus aspirations and values.

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In Welcome to the Urban Revolution, he uses thespecific urbanisms of Curitiba (Brazil), Barcelona,and Chicago to support Porter’s argument that “op-erational effectiveness means you’re running the racefaster, but strategy is choosing a different race be-cause it’s the one you’ve set yourself up to win”(Porter, 1996). There is no ideal system for develop-ing a city; the ideal system is integration of all partiesconcerned. In the years since the end of Spanish dic-tatorship, Barcelona has succeeded in revitalizing itsneighborhoods, reclaiming the espai public, a phrasethat has a special local meaning not captured in itsEnglish translation as “public space.” Success camelargely because there was a close match between thepractices of urbanism and the local cultural values.Brugmann’s detailed example of Barcelona revealshow such a progressive transformation is values-driven.

He contrasts Miami, which is typical of many U.S.cities. Unlike Barcelona, which specializes in a mixedpublic-private zone where people of all backgroundsinteract intensely, Miami is preoccupied with“defensible space”—places where urban design andsecurity services create a privately controlled en-vironment in which people create their sense ofcommunity. Despite their origins in public-facingcities like New York, Havana, or Port-au-Prince,Miami’s diverse migrant population shares a cul-ture where private ownership and control, personalconvenience, and safety rank very high on the hi-erarchy of local urban values. Brugmann quotesDario Moreno of Florida International University:“There’s been a kind of cultural mind-set. Miami isa city of people who don’t want to live in density. It’sarticulated in a sense that there are too many peopleor the city is dirty and crime ridden . . . . Miami is acity where the suburban culture avoids downtown.”Hence, the centers of life are the restaurant patio,the gated suburban development, and the security-controlled shopping malls. People drive everywhere.“Parking lots are the primary form of espai public,”notes Brugmann.

Brugmann distinguishes among four dominant city-building approaches: (1) the ad hoc approach, il-lustrated by the migrant city of Dharavi, India; (2)“citysystems” such as mahalles (village modes ofliving) in Turkish cities; (3) city models like sub-urban residential subdivisions or shopping malls inAmerican cities; and (4) master-planned cities (forexample, Brasilia and Malaysia’s Putrajaya). Masterplanners and city model builders track their budgetsand their own financial metrics but rarely evaluatethe evolving economics of the city as a whole. Rapidcity building without consideration of mature ur-banism can create a drain on the city and nationaleconomy. Brugmann cites figures of gross domesticproduct (GDP) per kilometer for various cities todemonstrate a productivity gap between cities builton a foundation of local urbanism and the giantconstruction sites that pass for many cities today.He shows how the 2008 financial crisis is trace-able to a handful of U.S. metropolitan areas. Whatis missing in these cities’ development? Proximity,density, and the economics of association. Surpris-ingly, Brugmann explains what can be learned fromDharavi, the world’s most notable migrant city, onthe outskirts of Mumbai. Dharavi is full of export-oriented companies. Does Dharavi’s integration intothe global economy illustrate the commonly ac-cepted notion of a global village or a flat world?

“The world is not flat,” declares Brugmann. Al-though many note that contemporary strategic chal-lenges are transnational, he debunks the assumptionthat any reduction in the impact of national bound-aries and controls means an end to geographicalsignificance. Instead, cities, and even specific loca-tions within them, are new sources of advantage.As business strategist Michael Porter documented,shared economies of density, scale, and associationof collocated firms or industrial clusters producesuch advantage. Porter discouraged the perspec-tive that firms gain competitive advantage throughoperational efficiencies that are reported not onlyin the corporate world, but also in a glut of city

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benchmarking reports and the “best-city-for”indexes. Brugmann supports Porter’s view that com-petitive advantages in regions are not really com-parable and come from differentiation, rather thana race to generic “world class standards” (Porter,1996).

To improve city environments, Brugmann showswith numerous examples that traditional city plan-ning methods don’t help. What is needed is a combi-nation of anthropology, sociology, market research,and design to transform incrementally local city-building practices and the city’s values foundation.Brugmann calls for corporations to contribute; heprovides broad guidelines as to how they can joinintegrated efforts to improve the City and build lo-cal communities with strong urbanisms.

Successful leaders continually question assumptions.Executives making location decisions must ques-tion the viability and economic success of city mod-els and master planned communities at a holisticlevel—the economics of a city, and not merely theshort-term return to a construction or developmentcompany. Francesco Clark constantly challenged“conventional wisdom” about his situation.

There is no best leadership paradigm, however. Ac-cording to Kessler and Wong-MingJi, executivesworking with different cultures (and that is virtu-ally all, whether involved globally or not) need toincorporate the roots, and not just the expressions,of various cultural contexts. Myths illuminate theseroots. Myths are sacred stories passed down thatcommunicate core principles, morals, and meanings.They are contextual because they support and vali-date a particular social order and they evolve withsocial changes to reinforce desired norms. CulturalMythology and Global Leadership includes detailedchapters expounding the myths of 20 countries fromall regions of the world. The various chapter authorseach show the relevance of the myths to leadershipin a specific nation’s context. Investigating a coun-try’s myths is beneficial because it distinguishes a

country from its neighbors. For example, in theirchapter, Patricia Friedrich, Andres Hatum, and LuizMesquita emphasize that often one finds refer-ence to Latin American business management, LatinAmerican culture, Latin American food, the Hispan-ics, and other generalizations that yield the wrongperception that within Latin America there is a co-incidence of beliefs, values, cultural manifestations,and, as a consequence, ways of doing business. In re-ality, this is not so. Isabel Allende, in Paula, describesher family’s experiences of culture shock when theymoved from Chile to Venezuela. Argentine mythsinclude Evita, El Che, and The Gaucho. Some Brazil-ian myths are “foreign is better,” the “cordial man,”the “adventurer,” and the “Carnival.”

Myths operate at the social level and need tobe interpreted. The recent history of Germany isparticularly interesting. The most popular Germanmyth is the Nibelungenlied, of which there are manyversions and adaptations. The most popular is theopera Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner.The idea of Germany as a nation-state did not de-velop until the nineteenth century, when mythologywas used and adapted to create patriotism. Oneof the most prominent misinterpretations wasNibelungentreue, or loyalty of the Nibelungs,which means unquestioning loyalty unto deathtoward the emperor, the country, and the superior.This influenced Germany’s role in the First WorldWar, how the National Socialists gained power,and, eventually, the beginning of the Second WorldWar. Because the National Socialists misinterpretedGermanic mythology in line with their ideology,Germans have developed an ideal of leadership thatdistances itself from a F uhrer (German for leader).They prefer a team approach, shared leadership andshared power, and critical thinking with a focus onthe depersonalized aspects of leadership as ways toavoid dictatorship in the future.

David Abdulai, contributor of a chapter in CulturalMythology and Global Leadership, stresses that an-cestral veneration by South Africans is not, as often

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incorrectly viewed by outsiders, equivalent to an-cestor worship. Zulus perceive their ancestors as in-termediaries between themselves and the supremebeing. Ancestral veneration, however, also formspart of the African extended family and kinshipsystem. A Zulu proverb is “Umuntu Umuntu nga-bantu,” literally interpreted as “a human being be-comes a person through others; only through youdo I become an I; I am because we are.” This ispopularized by South Africans through one word,“Ubuntu.” Abdulai quotes Desmond Tutu, “Youcan’t be a solitary person. It’s all linked. We havethis communal sense, and because of this deepsense of community, the harmony of the group is aprime attribute.” This calls for compassionate lead-ership as opposed to the transactional or contractualtypes that exist in some other cultures. The compas-sionate leadership example of Nelson Mandela isexpressed in his lack of bitterness toward his fellowwhite South Africans when he became the first blackpresident, despite the suffering that he and otherblack South Africans had endured under apartheid.

The “Ubuntu” concept, though local to SouthAfrica, is relevant to the development of the City:integration of all parties, public and private, smalland large, leads to better economic outcomes forthe whole, as Brugmann shows through numerousdetailed illustrations. Also, for Clark, only with theunwavering help of his supportive team of family,friends, doctors, therapists, and advocates was heable to realize his dream of being involved in society

through his entrepreneurship. A compelling inter-pretation of culture through mythology makes a newcontribution to our understanding of different soci-eties, and adds to the knowledge already put forthby Hofstede (2001) and the GLOBE Study (House,Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004).

References

Allende, I. (2008). Paula: A memoir. New York: HarperPerennial.

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing val-ues, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations(2nd ed.). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W.,& Gupta, V. (2004). Culture, leadership and organizations:The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage.

Porter, M. (1996). What is strategy? Harvard BusinessReview, 74(6), 61–78.

UAE says BlackBerry is potential security threat. (2010).Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100726/apon re mi ea/ml emirates blackberry

Gillian Rice is Professor Emerita at the Thunderbird Schoolof Global Management and was a Fulbright Senior Scholarat the University of Bahrain in 1996–1997. She holds aPhD from the University of Bradford. Dr. Rice’s researchinterests include environmentally related consumer behavior,the fair trade movement, and models of employee creativ-ity and organizational innovation. She can be contacted atgillian.rice@thunderbird.edu.

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