ARTICLE: "The 2008 Global Cities Index," by Foreign Policy, A.T. Kearney and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Foreign Policy, December 2008.

Of the 60 great cities in the world, the vast majority are coastal or big ports thanks to river connections. The shift to coastal city dominance is especially true among the New Core and emerging Gap economies. Once you get east of Berlin, there's only Moscow in the interior until you hit New Dehli/Bangalore and Chongqing. Everybody else is coastal. International cooperation among coastal cities is a big deal in this century. Get it down right in terms of resiliency and you're talking upwards of half the world's population.