By Fabrice Aragno and Mounir Ayoub

If metropoles were the 20th century's favorite playground, borders are the laboratory for globalized phenomena in the 21st century. Hot spots for migrants, barbed wire, Green borders, checkpoints, go slow for cross-border workers, crypto-currency mining farms, casinos, brothels, tax havens, condominiums, principalities, white elephants, and so on: such places, residues of nation states, are all to be found on borders. Border inhabitants are often left to their own device. To date, borders lack a political project. In order to realize this project, the editors have worked in-situ with those living in border regions in Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Liechtenstein, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Eritrea. They have started to imagine, describe and model the real territory and a potential project for it. A collective intelligence - a res publica - is taking form.