I’M a city girl, an urban woman. I thrive in cities. After a few days of breathing in the fresh air, I get bored and listless in the countryside. And I’m not alone.

Across the world, millions of men and women are abandoning villages for life in the city. It’s about jobs of course but also about access to schools, health care and being able to catch a movie or two.

It’s also about being active, modern citizens. Urban dwellers have a stronger voice in domestic politics than their rural counterparts. If they want to stay in power, politicians have to meet the aspirations of their urban citizens.

Increasingly, as cities emerge as active global players, they are also beginning to have a say in foreign policy.

International relations used to be the exclusive preserve of states and national governments. Today, states and cities often have to compete for the global spotlight. And while presidents and prime ministers may still get 21-gun salutes, it’s city mayors who often have the more interesting stories to tell and lessons to share.

Take the incorrigible Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. During a visit to China last year, Johnson upstaged both British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Chancellor George Osborne in wooing Chinese leaders and business representatives as well as Chinese students.

Johnson’s search for foreign investors has taken him across the world and reinforced London’s image as a “separate country” or a “foreign land” that doesn’t really belong with the rest of Britain. As one British newspaper noted recently: “Were London a sovereign state, it would have a GDP on a par with Switzerland or Sweden. Interestingly, an independent London would boast a national income about twice as large as Singapore, that enterprising city-state often thought a potential model for London.” Many would agree.

Mayoral elections are now as fiercely competitive as those for national leaders — and get as much media attention. The municipal elections in Paris in March which pit Anne Hidalgo of the Socialist Party against Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet of the centre-right UMP were reported across the world. Hidalgo — now elected the first woman mayor of Paris — is at loggerheads with London’s Johnson, recently telling her rival that London is “just a suburb” of Paris.

Deploying their increasing clout, city leaders are joining up as partners with other international actors and networking, networking, networking. Mayors have joined up in associations, signed conventions, created all kinds of clubs to explore issues of common interest.

They have plenty to talk about. Mayors across the globe are engaged in important political debates not just on purely urban issues but also on wider issues such as climate change and sustainability as well as security and peacebuilding.

To see urbanisation in action, look closely at Asia. China and India are in the vanguard of a wave of urban expansion, with experts predicting that by 2025, nearly 2.5 billion Asians will live in cities, accounting for almost 54 per cent of the world’s urban population. India and China alone will account for more than 62 per cent of Asian urban population growth and 40 per cent of global urban population growth from 2005 to 2025.

Never before in history have two of the largest nations (in terms of population) urbanised at the same time, and at such a pace. There are expectations that this process will drive fundamental shifts — in both countries — which will have significant consequences for the world economy and offer exciting new opportunities for investors.

Urbanisation is also changing politics in both countries. The overwhelming victory of India’s Narendra Modi in last month’s general election was largely due to the fact that India is far more urban than it likes to think.

Modi tapped into this rapid urbanisation of India and the urban population’s desire for change and reform while the paternalistic Congress party interacted with villages and the declining rural population. China meanwhile is grappling with the challenge of integrating millions of rural immigrants into rural life. Recent reforms announced last year paved the way for changes to the stringent hukou system of household registration which restricts rural migrants access to urban education, health and other facilities.

Of the 75 most dynamic cities of 2025 identified by the McKinsey Global Institute, an extraordinary 29 are expected to be in China. Some are already global powers, from top-ranked Shanghai to manufacturing dynamo Shenzhen; others, from Fuzhou to Xiamen, were little more than provincial backwaters in the 20th century but look to be household names in the 21st, powering the global economy not just through their sheer size but also through their urban innovation and pulsing drive.

Cities are also booming in South East Asia where an additional 54 million people are expected to move to cities by 2025. Nearly 40 per cent of the GDP of ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) is expected to come from 142 cities with population between 200,000 and 5 million.

Certainly, congested cities are home to problems of water and waste management, and are confronted with enormous social, economic, environmental, transport and mobility challenges. And yet, you can’t drag me away from them. After a few hours of communing with nature, I long for city life — along with millions of others.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2014