Global villagers

FORGET YUPPIED, Dinkies and Generation X-ers; the age of the Hubber is upon us. Well-off, well-travelled and well-connected, Hubbers are turning the global village into their personal playground. They may be based in Hong Kong or Tokyo, but they're equally at home in London, New York or Paris. Their neighbourhood is their e-mail address book, they hang out in the same places and they decide what's hot and what's not. And, says Stan Stalnaker, the Hong Kong and London-based marketing director for the Fortune Group, the future is theirs.

Stalnaker has just published Hub Culture: The Next Wave Of Urban Consumers, a book that attempts to tap into the 21st-century zeitgeist and analyse its potential, for good and bad. What he sees is 'a generation of global nomads [that] shuttles between the main cities escaping some of the boredom that comes with stationary living . . . in search of opportunities as well as pleasure. They are young and old, singles and couples, hip and not so groovy. They are consumed by the quest for experience.'

Administrator Paveena Atipatha - who is half-Thai, half-Chinese - is one such Hubber. She travels once a month, mainly to see her relatives in Chicago and Bangkok, but would jet across the Pacific just for a party. 'I like to have a change of pace and scenery,' she says.

Mindy Lee, an analyst from Hong Kong, works in London. She regularly returns home but also spends many weekends in Brussels, where her boyfriend works, and in New York, where he grew up. 'It's a hectic schedule, but it means I have much more fun,' says the 33-year-old. 'A lot of my schoolfriends have never left Hong Kong. I need to explore new horizons otherwise life becomes so dull.'

Carter Agar clocks up more air miles than a Cathay Pacific stewardess. The American telecoms executive is based in Shanghai but also has a home in Hong Kong, family in New York and travels to San Francisco, Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok and Singapore for work. 'I'm on the road once a week,' he says. Everywhere the 30-year-old bachelor goes he has a ready-made group of friends to plug into, with whom he keeps in contact by e-mail, sending and receiving about 100 each day. 'I have an incredible network of people,' he says.

Atipatha, Lee and Agar are just three of the increasing number of jetset, fun-loving and trend-conscious global players whose lives revolve around the world's main urban hubs and whose paths frequently criss-cross by virtue of two or three degrees of separation. But lump them all into one group, says Stalnaker, and they become collectively remarkable. They represent a new strata of 21st-century society that Stalnaker calls 'hub influentials', who make up an estimated 10 per cent of the population of the world's major urban centres. Despite vastly different backgrounds and living thousands of kilometres apart, hub culture has created shared values and a commonality among Hubbers which makes them identifiable.