Indian cities are increasingly using global partnerships to shape urban development, yet realising their full transformative potential demands moving toward a coherent, institutionally grounded, and equity-centred framework for city diplomacy
Generating nearly 80 percent of the global GDP, cities are at the forefront of global economic transformation and geopolitical significance. With this growth comes challenges of expanding and modernising infrastructure systems, including water, housing, transport, and digital networks, often amid socio-spatial and economic inequality. Given this dichotomy, the kinds of transnational collaborations cities can forge can influence how they are built, financed, and governed. City diplomacy has therefore emerged as a critical subset of subnational engagement, wherein cities pursue international partnerships in trade, culture, climate action, and infrastructure.
In India, this marks a gradual yet significant shift from a traditionally state-centric diplomatic framework toward more decentralised and networked forms of engagement. Emerging practices of paradiplomacy are evident in sister-city pacts such as Delhi–Beijing and Ahmedabad–Guangzhou, and multi-scalar initiatives such as CITIIS 2.0, supported by the EU, France and Germany, to advance climate-resilient urban development. Similarly, flagship national programmes such as the Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT have facilitated collaborations with multiple foreign governments and institutions, enabling the co-production of urban solutions. These developments resonate with the perspective of relational urbanism, which frames cities not as fixed territories but as nodes embedded within dynamic circuits of capital, knowledge, and policy exchange.
Emerging practices of paradiplomacy are evident in sister-city pacts such as Delhi–Beijing and Ahmedabad–Guangzhou, and multi-scalar initiatives such as CITIIS 2.0, supported by the EU, France and Germany, to advance climate-resilient urban development.
Yet, much of this engagement remains fragmented and project-driven. To scale up city diplomacy, we need to move towards a more systemic, multi-scalar approach that strengthens institutional capacities, diversifies partnerships, embeds principles of equity, and aligns global engagements with long-term urban transformation goals.
Globalisation has fundamentally reconfigured the scalar architecture of governance, unsettling the primacy of the nation-state as the sole locus of authority in international relations. While states continue to retain formal sovereignty, a growing body of scholarship points to the emergence of multi-level governance, wherein authority is dispersed across supranational, national, and subnational scales. Within this reconfiguration, cities have increasingly asserted themselves as critical political actors, particularly in addressing challenges such as climate change, urban growth, infrastructure and public health. City authorities are often at the frontline of managing urban challenges, given their proximity to people and infrastructure, as well as their responsibility for service delivery. This proximity to both problems and policy implementation has catalysed the rise of paradiplomacy, wherein cities engage directly in international cooperation to advance their developmental and strategic interests.
The growing agency of cities in global affairs is rooted in their structural position within the world economy, as Saskia Sassen’s analysis of global cities as key command nodes coordinating transnational economic activity highlights.
The growing agency of cities in global affairs is rooted in their structural position within the world economy, as Saskia Sassen’s analysis of global cities as key command nodes coordinating transnational economic activity highlights. By concentrating multinational headquarters, advanced producer services, finance, and information flows, cities emerge not just as administrative units but as strategic actors shaping international economic and governance processes. The climate crisis has also emerged as a key driver of city diplomacy, with cities occupying a paradoxical position as both major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions and among the most vulnerable to climate-induced risks, including flooding, extreme heat events, and sea-level rise. This dual condition has necessitated more direct and proactive engagement by cities in transnational climate governance, often through networks, partnerships and collaborative platforms that operate alongside national frameworks to co-produce climate solutions and contribute to a more decentralised, networked model of global governance.
Sister or twin-city partnerships represent one of the most visible and operational forms of subnational diplomacy, enabling cities to cultivate transnational relationships that extend beyond formal state-led engagements. City-to-city bilateral relations exemplify subnational diplomacy, fostering developmental exchanges that amplify soft power amid the country’s urban ascent. They allow cities to engage directly with global counterparts, forging collaborations that are often more flexible, issue-specific, and implementation-oriented than those through national diplomatic channels.
In practice, these partnerships span multiple sectors. For example, Mumbai has twin-city ties with Yokohama to facilitate port management and disaster resilience exchanges, with Los Angeles to promote film and trade linkages, and with Busan for both. Bengaluru partners with San Francisco on tech innovation hubs, while Delhi partners with Tokyo on urban development and environmental sustainability, drawing on Japanese expertise to strengthen its startup ecosystem. These arrangements, as soft power instruments, project the dynamism of Indian cities. For example, Mumbai’s global finance branding attracts investment without coercion.
A critical dimension of these partnerships lies in their role in facilitating inter-city learning and policy mobility. Institutional partnerships like the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group position Delhi as a learning hub, sharing flood-resilient strategies from New York, while exporting heat action plans to Southeast Asian peers. The Smart Cities Mission integrates global benchmarks via platforms such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities. In India, the European Union (EU)-backed CITIIS 2.0 exemplifies this, linking Indore and Kochi to European waste-to-energy models, fostering not only technological adoption but also convergence in governance practices.
A critical dimension of these partnerships lies in their role in facilitating inter-city learning and policy mobility. Institutional partnerships like the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group position Delhi as a learning hub, sharing flood-resilient strategies from New York, while exporting heat action plans to Southeast Asian peers.
Beyond policy exchange, the circulation of skilled labour represents an equally significant dimension of inter-city learning. It infuses technical prowess, including in advanced economies such as those in Scandinavia, which are currently experiencing acute shortages of skilled workers across sectors such as IT, engineering, healthcare, construction, and transport services. This presents an opportunity to embed structured, short-term labour mobility and skills exchange programmes, or global skills partnerships, within city-to-city partnerships. Such exchanges can facilitate mutual learning, enhance technical capacities and create transnational labour linkages that benefit both sending and receiving cities. In this context, cities can also emerge as platforms for new forms of economic diplomacy where labour mobility not only responds to workforce gaps but generates developmental externalities for the Global South through remittances, repatriation, and the acquisition of new skill sets. By embedding cultural diplomacy, such exchanges can further deepen trust, strengthen transnational linkages, and enhance the prospects for a more robust, mutually beneficial economic diplomacy. City diplomacy thus actively produces and strengthens this connectivity, indicating a bidirectional, mutually reinforcing relationship between the two.
As cities increasingly leverage these knowledge networks, inter-city learning becomes a foundational pillar of city diplomacy, informing urban governance and shaping how cities position themselves within the global economy.
City diplomacy has increasingly become a strategic instrument through which cities position themselves within regional and global economic systems. Beyond conventional notions of investment promotion, it enables urban governments to actively shape their economic trajectories by attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), nurturing industrial clusters, integrating into global value chains, and enhancing their international visibility. At a time when cities compete for capital, talent, and technology, subnational diplomatic engagements help them differentiate themselves as sites of opportunity, innovation, and stability.
A key dimension of cities’ economic positioning lies in their ability to mobilise international finance and technical expertise through partnerships with multilateral institutions and bilateral agencies. These partnerships facilitate access to infrastructure investment, climate finance, and capacity-building while embedding global standards and governance practices. Japan is a key infrastructure partner for India, recently pledging an Official Development Assistance (ODA) loan of roughly INR 16,420 crore (around US$ 174 million) to fund major projects in urban transport, health, and agriculture. Beyond large-scale investments, subnational collaborations, such as the Ahmedabad–Hamamatsu sister city partnership, highlight how city-to-city diplomacy fosters technological exchange, sectoral innovation, and locally grounded transitions toward sustainable infrastructure and green development.
Japan is a key infrastructure partner for India, recently pledging an Official Development Assistance (ODA) loan of roughly INR 16,420 crore (around US$ 174 million) to fund major projects in urban transport, health, and agriculture.
Economic engagement through city diplomacy is not limited to bilateral interactions; it extends to multilateral collaborations around sustainability and innovation. The India–Denmark partnership on river management facilitated a collaboration between the Indian Institute of Technology-Banaras Hindu University (IIT-BHU), the Government of India and the Government of Denmark to establish the Smart Laboratory on Clean Rivers (SLCR) in Varanasi, demonstrating how urban challenges can be leveraged to build international research and innovation ecosystems. Similarly, the collaboration between India and the Netherlands to accelerate green hydrogen collaboration and innovation reflects the growing importance of aligning urban development with emerging global priorities such as decarbonisation and circular economies.
City diplomacy thus operates as a multi-dimensional tool of economic positioning, linking infrastructure development, industrial growth, technological innovation, and sustainability transitions. However, while such partnerships may unlock new growth pathways, they may also privilege capital-intensive sectors, reinforce uneven development, and create dependencies on external actors. The challenge, therefore, lies in leveraging city diplomacy not just to attract investment, but to shape inclusive, resilient, and future-ready urban economies.
City diplomacy is emerging as a central instrument for Indian cities as they navigate an interconnected, crisis-prone global landscape. Yet it remains fragmented and heavily reliant on externally funded initiatives. While sister-city partnerships and global networks have expanded engagement, their transformative potential is constrained by insufficient institutional integration and limited continuity. Strengthening city diplomacy requires a coherent framework with better coordination across municipal, state, and national levels, alongside enhanced local capacities. Diversifying beyond North–South linkages towards more reciprocal South–South cooperation is essential. Ultimately, cities must align global engagement with local priorities, ensuring more strategic, inclusive and context-responsive forms of international collaboration.
Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow with the Urban Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow with ORF’s Urban Studies Programme. Her research interests span the intersections of environment and development, urban studies, water governance, Water, ...
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