Culture, Identity and Democracy in the Face of Modernization (Francis Fukuyama‪)‬

Editor's note: This article is excerpted from the presentation Francis Fukuyama delivered as part of the Clash of Cultures program at the 2006 CRE High Level Conference, which took place July 13-16 in Park City, Utah. Read more about the conference programming in this edition of Real Estate Issues (see page 9) and at www.cre.org/programs_and_events/high_level_conference.cfm. I OUGHT TO START WITH A BIT OF GOOD NEWS, given that if you open the newspaper this morning, it doesn't look like the world is in very good shape. But it does seem to me that--if you consider the world as a whole--a great deal of mankind is undergoing a very rapid and positive process of modernization.