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In Jakarta we live in a megacity, a claim we share with over half the world’s population. By 2050 the United Nations predicts two-thirds of all humans will be living in megacities. These are cities that drive the global economy; they are the junction boxes of economic exchange. And as people, capital and culture become increasingly fluid, every city is competing to absorb that fluidity.

Peter Hall, the great urban chronicler, has referred to cities as “unraveling points,” where “people meet, people talk, people listen to each other’s music and each other’s words, dance each other’s dances, take in each other’s thoughts.”

These unraveling points are ever more global in nature, filled with ever more globally cosmopolitan populations.

That is why the way cities talk about themselves is changing.

Globalization and regional economic growth trends are changing the way cities behave and city branding strategies are moving into a new order.

They’re not about logos, brand values or PR stunts, but rather about what cities stand for.

Cities, regions and nations are creating strategic communications boards while also integrating the aims of the business community with those of the public sector and the cultural institutions that are the life force of the city.

In effect they are creating new forms of integrated governance as they go about their business of defining the future of how they talk about themselves.

Cities and nations cannot rely on tourism campaigns alone to manage their international reputations.

Smart cities know that by attracting major sporting and cultural events they bring the focus to the totality of what their city is about. Cities are not just about one event, or an iconic architectural showcase or a major infrastructural project.

A city must find a voice, vocabulary and story that reflect its economic proposition and its offer among competitors.

Increasingly, cities are moving toward these approaches to realizing their brand, and nowhere is this more true than in Asia. Scores of major events are taking place in cities across Asia, from Delhi to Guanghzou to Singapore.

Almaty is hosting the winter Asian Games in 2011. And don’t be surprised if the 2018 Winter Olympic Games decision goes to Pyeongchang next July.

This decision will be underscored if the International Olympic Committee finds an audience for winter sports — and Asia, with its youthful demographic, can readily provide that.

In the 19th century, Nietzsche was the first philosopher to recommend a course of self-reinvention.

By the 20th century self-reinvention was a neurosis as far as Freud was concerned, but in 21st century city life we have come of age in this line of thinking.

Self-reinvention applies not only to individuals but to cities, regions and nations.

This is especially important in a post-colonial and post-imperial world.

Benedict Anderson, in his classic analysis “Imagined Communities” outlines how we create collective understanding of ourselves and how nationalisms are born and manipulated.

The difference for the 21st century and a global information age is that people and cities are actively taking the mantle and refashioning perceptions and re-imagining their futures.

The opportunity to unshackle oneself from the past and begin a new future in a transformational sense is at the heart of the Asian century.

The youthful demographic bulge of a number of societies across Asia means self-invention will not only be driven by the experience of the past but it will be driven by desire for change.

The most significant feature of self-invention is that it enables you to take the reins and define your future.

Part of reinvention is about picking those bits of the past that you want to celebrate and showing how they are relevant for the future.

Jakarta has finally shaken off the mantle of shame at being a Dutch colony and is starting to celebrate some of the remnants of its Dutch past, with the renovation and preservation of Dutch colonial buildings in Kota.

Other cities like Bandung are also just waking up to the value of their heritage. Bandung isn’t nicknamed Paris Van Java for nothing.

The growth of cities is more than just an economic trend; it is driven by political and social factors too.

People come to cities not just to find work, but to be themselves and to experience the world. In an age of self-invention cities provide the canvas for people to define their futures.

And just as it is important to the individual to re-invent himself or herself, the most successful cities will be those who enable that self-invention.

And naturally, as an extension of this process, cities now want to reinvent themselves on the global stage. In setting its vision for the future, a city not only reinvents itself but what it means to be a citizen in it.

The rapid process of industrialization, urbanization and economic growth taking place across Asia means that the region will redefine what citizenship means in the 21st century.

This is the meaning of the Asian Century. Only time and a lot of soul- searching will determine what it has meant to move from a citizen of Batavia to a citizen of Jakarta.

In Asia, more voices have emerged, tackling the problems of resource constraints and the challenges of pluralism, just as Asian technocrats make technological leapfrogs over the West.

Those voices will redefine what citizenship means in the 21st century. It’s time for them to broadcast that story to the world.

How Jakarta, or other mega cities in Indonesia take up this challenge could mean the difference between becoming a vibrant city or deteriorating into a stopover-metropolis, a viewing point for the brightly lit metropolis on the horizon that has marketed itself as the height of happening.
 

David Adam is the CEO of Global Cities Ltd and an associate of Strategic Asia Europe.