City Ambassadors | Less Talking | Connect and Act | The Rise of Twin City Campaigns | The Salt Magic
NV Paulose, Chairman, Global TV +91 98441 82044
We often see cities as separate worlds. New York moves fast. Mumbai dreams big. Tokyo flows with precision. Each seems to live in its own bubble, defined by its skyline and local life. For years, connecting cities meant building airports, setting up trade routes, or installing faster internet cables. These were physical or digital links, but not emotional ones. Now, something deeper is happening. Cities are beginning to connect through people, stories, and shared experiences.
This new kind of connection is giving rise to what we can call the City Twinning; a living network of communities where each city’s life and identity enrich those of others. Success is not about building more infrastructure but about linking the human pulse that beats within every street and neighbourhood. When people across cities start connecting this way, three big changes take place.
1. The End of the “Local or Global” Divide
In the past, people thought you had to choose between staying local or becoming global. You either lived deeply in your own culture or left it behind to experience the world. The City Twinning removes this choice. Think of a food vendor in Chennai sharing a new recipe with a cook in Mexico City, or a musician in Lisbon creating a song with a beatmaker in Berlin through a local culture-based platform. This is not the kind of globalization that erases identity. It is a form of shared growth where each local story adds colour to another city’s story.
People become both rooted and connected. We belong deeply to our home city but also form meaningful ties across the world. We are not “citizens of nowhere” but “citizens of many connected places.”
2. Cities Start Solving Problems Together
Every city faces similar issues; hunger, employment, traffic, waste, housing, loneliness, and pollution. Usually, each city struggles to solve these problems on its own. But when local innovators, civic leaders, and community builders start sharing ideas, cities become part of one big learning system. A simple water-saving solution from Pune can be adapted for use in São Paulo. A project that helps the elderly in Copenhagen can inspire a similar effort in Seoul. Ideas spread quickly, saving time, cost, and effort. When this happens, cities stop working in isolation. They start functioning like a connected brain, where one city’s success becomes a lesson for all. The collective wisdom of cities grows stronger with every shared idea. People think and act together.
3. Taking Back Our Stories from Algorithms
Today, much of what we know about other cities comes from social media or global news feeds. These often show only the extreme; the protests, disasters, or viral moments. This gives us a narrow and sometimes fearful picture of the world. But when people tell their own local stories directly, the picture changes. You could watch a live walk through a Cairo market, follow a Toronto journalist explaining a council debate, or hear about a new school project in Nairobi. These small, real stories show the daily rhythm of life that big media often misses. Connect and get connected; act further as well.
This simple act of people sharing their real experiences and working together on shared wisdom and goals help cities regain control of their own image. It builds understanding and empathy across cultures because people connect through real lives, not filtered headlines.
From a Map of Cities to a Living Organism
Connecting cities through people and stories is not just about speed or technology. It is about creating a new kind of shared awareness. We are moving from a world of separate city-states to one living, breathing organism; the City Twinning. This is a living network. Every city is like neurons connected everywhere with its own culture and energy.
The links between them are like brains and minds that carry ideas, emotions, and creativity. The more these cities connect, the more alive and intelligent the network becomes. The future is for those who are connected; systemic and dynamic. Every heartbeat adds strength to the global pulse. Together, we can think, feel, and grow as one living world.
