This striking map shows America organized around major cities, not states

The modern global economy is structured more around mega-cities than national borders, says Parag Khanna, author of a new book called Connectography — and the good news for the United States is that we have a lot of them. While other countries often rely on a single city to drive their economy (like Lagos for Nigeria, Istanbul for Turkey, or Moscow for Russia) America has a lot of big, productive metro areas.

That's the basis for Khanna's design of a re-mapped America organized around city-states instead of the 50 states we have today.

Khanna argues that such a reorganization (which includes a high-speed rail scheme to facilitate inter-regional mobility) would be an economic boon, and it would cut back on unfair pork barrel spending that benefits one district at the expense of others. "And if you do that," he concludes, "the laws of economics will take over, and people will more freely engage in commerce."

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