政治理论家本杰明·R·巴伯在生命最后几年里，极力推崇城市，认为城市是能够解决世界问题的政治实体。巴伯对公共话语最著名的贡献是他1995年出版的著作《圣战与麦当劳世界》，该书审视了冷战后全球化的加速以及随之而生的部落主义。在很大程度上，它预见了将塑造二十一世纪头几十年的政治裂痕和社会经济力量。
The political theorist Benjamin R. Barber, in the final years of his life, championed cities as the polities that could fix the world’s problems. Barber’s most famous contribution to the public discourse had been his 1995 book, “Jihad vs. McWorld,” which looked at the acceleration of post-Cold War globalization and a tribalism that grew in response. It anticipated, to a remarkable extent, the political ruptures and the socioeconomic forces that would shape the first decades of the twenty-first century.
这部作品赢得了比尔·克林顿总统的赞赏，并在“9·11”袭击事件后成为平装畅销书。巴伯认为，不受约束的资本主义及其反弹——日益表现为各种原教旨主义极端主义——尽管两者相互对抗，但都对民主构成了威胁。2001年11月，他在华盛顿表示，它们所释放的破坏性张力只能通过某种“国际公民基础设施”来解决，这种基础设施需要超越民族国家的利益，从核心上理解我们社会之间的相互依存关系。
The work earned Barber the admiration of President Bill Clinton and became a best-seller in paperback following the 9/11 attacks. Barber argued that unfettered capitalism and the backlash to it, which was increasingly expressed through forms of fundamentalist extremism, although in contest with each other, were both a danger to democracies. The destructive tensions that they unleashed, he told the Washington in November, 2001, could only be addressed by some sort of “international civic infrastructure” that would think beyond the interests of nation-states and take on, at its heart, an understanding of the interdependence of our societies.
到2013年，巴伯似乎已经找到了这种结构可能是什么的答案：在另一本书《如果市长统治世界》中，他将城市视为民主的基石，并将民选市长视为比国家元首更有效、更务实的行政长官。他呼吁建立一个全球市长议会，让城市领导人能够合作应对世界上一些最大的挑战，包括气候变化、犯罪、恐怖主义、移民等。（一个以该名称命名的实体后来确实出现了，并于2016年在海牙首次正式召开会议，汇集了来自世界各地的市长。）
By 2013, Barber seemed to have arrived at an answer for what that structure could be: in another book, “If Mayors Ruled the World,” he cast cities as the building blocks of democracy and their elected mayors as more effective, pragmatic executives than the heads of nations. He called for a Global Parliament of Mayors, where the leaders of cities could collaborate on addressing some of the world’s biggest challenges, including climate change, crime, terrorism, migration, and much else. (An actual entity with that name later emerged and was first formally convened in 2016, in The Hague, bringing together mayors from around the world.)
“我们在城市史诗般的历史中走了一个圆圈。人类在城镇中开启了迈向政治和文明的征程——那是民主最初的孵化器，”巴伯在书中写道。
“We have come full circle in the city’s epic history. Humankind began its march to politics and civilization in the township—it was democracy’s original incubator,” Barber wrote in .
“这座曾经是我们的起点的地方，如今似乎已成为我们的命运所在。在这里，创造力得以释放，社区关系得以巩固，公民意识得以实现。”世界各地的城市的领导者都在为民主而发声——即使他们所在国家的领导人并不如此。
“Once our origin, the city now appears to be our destiny. It is where creativity is unleashed, community solidified and citizenship realized.”Leaders of cities around the world are standing up for democracy, even if the leaders of their countries are not.