Chapter 1: Mobility Is DestinyCHAPTER 1 MOBILITY IS DESTINY Geography is what we make of it Ask anyone who graduated from Georgetown''s School of Foreign Service between 1990 and 2005 which one course they''ll remember until the day they die. Their eyes will light up, a smirk will appear, and one word will come out of their mouths: "Map." A mere one-credit, pass-fail class quickly became so legendary that students intentionally failed its placement test just to take it. They were quickly joined by hundreds of other undergrads who just wanted to sit in, requiring larger auditoriums each year. All for the pleasure of witnessing the thunderous lectures of the encyclopedic and cantankerous Dr. Charles Pirtle, a human cannon of notable facts about every single country, capital, body of water, mountain range, and border dispute on Earth. In 2005, Newsweek magazine featured "Map of the Modern World" in its list of "College Classes for Masochists." We couldn''t get enough.

Pirtle''s noble objective was twofold: to combat geographical ignorance and, just as important, to demonstrate that the world map is an ever evolving collision of environment, politics, technology, and demographics. It''s thanks to Pirtle that analyzing the interplay of these forces became my professional obsession. After all, high school geography class in the 1990s was hardly inspiring: It was basically earth science (mostly geology; no mention of climate change) with a static layer of borders on top. For most students, the study of geography sadly defaults to this political geography, as if the most arbitrary lines on our maps (borders) are the most permanent. In reality, states are more like porous containers shaped by the flows of people and resources within and across them. Without these, what is a state even worth? This is a book about the geography that matters most to us: human geography. Human geography investigates the where and the how of the distribution of our species across 150 million square kilometers of land on six continents. Think of it like climatology, a deep science of how we relate to one another and the planet.

Human geography subsumes hot-button topics like demographics (the age and gender balance of populations) and migration (the resettlement of people), but goes much deeper into our ethnographic composition, and even our genetic adaptation to a changing environment. Climate refugees and economic migrants, intermarriage and even evolution--all are part of the grand story of our human geography. Why does human geography matter so much today? Because our species is in for a rough ride, and we can no longer take for granted a stable relationship between our geographic layers such as nature (where the water, energy, mineral, and food resources are), politics (where the territorial borders are that demarcate states), and economics (where the infrastructure and industries are located). These are among the major forces that have determined our human geography for the past thousands of years--and in turn, our human geography has shaped them. But never before have the feedback loops among these layers been so intense and complex. Human economic activity has accelerated the deforestation and industrial emissions that cause global warming, rising sea levels, and massive drought. Four of America''s most important cities are most at risk: New York City and Miami may drown, while Los Angeles is running out of water and San Francisco is blanketed by wildfires. The chain reactions slamming millions of people in America apply to billions in Asia.

Consider this: Asia''s spectacular economic rise in recent decades was propelled by breakneck population growth, urbanization, and industrialization, all of which have spiked its emissions output. This has contributed to rising sea levels that threaten the teeming populations of its coastal megacities on the Pacific Rim and Indian Ocean. So the rise of Asia is accelerating the sinking of Asia--which could cause ever more Asians to flee across borders and spark resource conflicts. We push the system, then the system pushes us. This seems an appropriate moment to take stock of how badly out of sync these layers of geography have become. We have wealthy countries across North America and Europe with 300 million and counting aging people and decaying infrastructure--but roughly 2 billion young people sitting idle in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia who are capable of caring for the elderly and maintaining public services. We have countless hectares of arable farmland across depopulated Canada and Russia, while millions of destitute African farmers are driven from their lands by drought. There are countries with sterling political systems yet few citizens, such as Finland and New Zealand, but also hundreds of millions of people suffering under despotic regimes or living in refugee camps.

Is it any surprise that record numbers of people have been on the move? Children of the twentieth century know the adages "Geography is destiny" and "Demography is destiny." The former implies that location and resources determine our fate, while the latter suggests that population size and age structure are the most important factors. Together, they tell us that we''re stuck where we are--better hope it''s a well-populated and resource-rich country. Should we continue to buy into such determinism? Of course not. Geography is not destiny. Geography is what we make of it. In my 2016 book Connectography I proposed a third axiom to explain the arc of global civilization: "Connectivity is destiny." Our vast infrastructure networks--a mechanical exoskeleton of railways, electricity grids, Internet cables, and more--enable the rapid movement of people, goods, services, capital, technology, and ideas on a planetary scale.

Connectivity and mobility are complementary, two sides of the same coin, and together they give rise to a fourth axiom that will define our future: Mobility is destiny . So what''s stopping us from using our connectivity to the fullest? The root of our collective inertia lies in borders--physical, legal, and psychological. The world''s political map looks the way it does mostly for contingent reasons: where ancient civilizations settled, where European empires conquered and divided, and where natural features separate populations. Borders are where they are because that''s where they''ve been. But the Earth is ours --not America''s or Russia''s or Canada''s or China''s. The question is: Can we discover a new cartographic pragmatism that brings political geography more in line with today''s needs? The management guru Peter Drucker warned that "the greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence itself but to act with yesterday''s logic."1 We can no longer afford to be passive observers of how human geography unfolds. Instead, we must actively realign our geographies, moving people and technologies where they are needed while keeping livable places habitable.

This requires an epochal shift in the organization of global civilization, a collective resettlement strategy for the world population. But if we get this right, we''ll strengthen our odds of survival as a species, revitalize floundering economies, and forge a more sensible map of humanity. Mass migrations are inevitable, and more than ever, they are necessary. In the coming decades, entire overpopulated regions of the world might be abandoned, while some depopulated territories may gain massively in population and become new civilizational centers. If you are lucky enough to be someplace from which you do not have to migrate--such as Canada or Russia--then chances are that migrants are coming your way. To paraphrase Lenin: You may not be interested in migration, but migration is interested in you. The world of tomorrow is not only full of mobile people but is defined by the mobility of everything . Everyone has a mobile phone, meaning communications, Internet, medical consultations, and finance are all accessible anywhere; nobody goes to a "bank.

" Both work and study have migrated online; the ranks of digital nomads have exploded. Ever more people are living in mobile homes and other movable dwellings. Even "fixed" investments have become fungible: We can 3D print buildings, set up factories and hospitals anywhere, generate electricity from solar or other renewable sources, and have drones deliver us anything we need. As we move, so does the supply chain: Labor and capital can perpetually shift to new land, generating fresh geographies of productivity. Mobility is the lens through which to view our future civilization. The concept of mobility blends the material and philosophical. It raises questions such as: Why are we moving, and what do those shifts reveal about our needs and desires? Then there are political and legal questions to explore: Who is allowed to move? What restrictions do we face on movement and why? And last but not least, there are normative questions: Where should people go? What is the optimal distribution of people around the world? Mobility is also an intangible and spiritual experience. Pause and appreciate how fluidly our anatomy carries us.

Moving stimulates creativity, the process of witnessing ways of life coming together. Philosophers such as John Dewey meditated on the aesthetics of moving freely both in nature and the social milieu, eloquently arguing that such interaction imbued life with meaning. Walter Benjamin spent a decade reflecting on the significance of the glass-covered arcades built in mid-nineteenth-century Paris and the wandering fl'neurs they invited. To move is to be free.