THE GLOBAL CITY

Pretest

Direction: Choose one of the many cities of the world and give brief description according to the
following indicators. Use the table below. Remember to write your source at the bottom of the
table.

________________________________
Name of the City

Indicator
Description

1. Business Activity

2. Human Capital

3. Information Exchange

4. Cultural Activities

5. Political Engagement

Source:
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Let’s Elaborate

Global City
It is generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system. The concept
comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be
understood as largely created, facilitated, and enacted in strategic geographic locales according
to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global.

The Global City Model: Organizing Hypotheses

The following are the seven (7) hypotheses organized by Sassen in his book and her theorization
of the global city model, to wit;
First, the geographic dispersal of economic activities that marks globalization, along with the
simultaneous integration of such geographically dispersed activities, is a key factor feeding the
growth and importance of central corporate functions. The more dispersed a firm’s operations
across different countries, the more complex and strategic its central functions – that is, the work
of managing, coordinating, servicing, financing a firm’s network of operations.
Second, these central functions ecome so complex that increasingly the headquarters of large
global firms outsource them: they buy a share of their central functions from highly specialized
service firms – accounting, legal, public relations, programming, telecommu-nications, and other
such services. While even ten years ago the key site for the production of these central functions
or components of them. This is especially the case with firms involved in global markets and non-
routine operations. But increasingly the headquarters of all large firms are buying more of such
inputs rather than producing them in-house.
Third, those specialized service firms engaged in the most complex and globalized markets are
subject to agglomeration economics. The complexity of the services they need to produce, the
uncertainty of the markets they are involved with either directly or through the headquarters for
which they are producing the services, and the growing importance of speed in all these
transactions, is a mix of conditions that constitutes a new agglomeration dynamic. The mix of
firms, talents, and expertise from a broad range of specialized fields makes a certain type of
urban environment function as an information center. Being in a city becomes synonymous with
being in an extremely intense and dense information loop.
A fourth hypothesis, derived from the preceding one, is that the more headquarters outsource
their most complex, unstandardized functions, particularly those subject to uncertain and
changing markets, the freer they are to opt for any location, because less work actually done in
the headquarters is subject to agglomeration economies.
This further underlines that the highly specialized and networked services sector. on advantages
of global cities is the highly specialized and networked services sector. In developing this
hypothesis, I was responding to a very common notion that the number of headquarters is what
specifies a global city. Empirically it may still be the case in many countries that the leading
business center is also the leading concentration of headquarters, but this may well be because
there is an absence of alternative locational options. But in countries with a well-developed
infrastructure outside the leading business center, there are likely to be multiple locational
options for such headquarters.
Fifth, these specialized service firms need to provide a global service which has meant a global
network of affiliates or some other forms or partnership, and as a result we have seen a
strengthening of cross border city-to-city transactions and networks. At the limit, this may well be
the beginning of the formation of transnational urban systems. The growth of global markets for
finance and specialized services, the need for transnational servicing networks due to sharp
increases in international investment, the reduced role of the government in the regulation of
international economic activity, and the corresponding ascendance of other institutional arenas –
notably global markets and corporate headquarters – all point to the existence of a series of
transnational networks of cities.
A sixth hypothesis, is that the growing numbers of high-level professionals and high profit-making
specialized service firms have the effect of raising the degree of spatial and socio-economic
inequality evident in these cities. The strategic role of these specialized services as inputs raises
the value of top-level professionals and their numbers. Further, the fact that talent can matter
enormously for the quality of these strategic outputs and, given the importance of speed, proven
talent is an added value, the structure of rewards is likely to experience rapid increase. The types
of activities, and workers’ lacking attributes in either manufacturing or industrial services are
most likely to get caught in the opposite cycle.
A seventh hypothesis, is that one result of the dynamics described in hypothesis six, is the
growing in- formalization of a range of economic activities which find their effective demand in
these cities, yet have profit rates that do not allow them to compete for various resources with
the high-profit making firms at the top of the system. Informalizing part of or all production and
distribution activities, including services, is one way of surviving under these conditions. (Sassen,
2005)

Indicators for Global City

Sassen (2005) opined that the following are the foremost characteristics of global cities:
1. Economic Power
2. Center of Authority
3. Center of higher learning

To measure the economic competitiveness of a city, the Economist Intelligence Unit has added
other criteria like market size, purchasing power of citizens, size of the middle class, and potential
for growth. The ‘tiny” Singapore is considered Asia’s most competitive city based on these criteria
because of its strong market, efficient and incorruptible government, and livability. It also houses
the regional offices of many major global corporations. (Claudio, 2018)
Global cities are also centers of authority. Washington D.C. may not be as wealthy as New York,
but it is the seat of American state power. People around the world know its major landmarks:
The White House, the Capitol Building (Congress), the Supreme Court, the Lincoln Memorial, and
the Washington Monument. Similarly, compared with Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra is a
sleepy town and thus is not as attractive to tourists. But as Australia’s political capital, it is home
to the country’s top politicians, bureaucrats, and policy advisors (Claudio, 2018).
The cities that house major international organizations may also be considered centers of political
influence. The headquarters of the United Nations is in New York, and that of the European
Union in Brussels. An influential political city near the Philippines is Jakarta, which not just the
capital of Indonesia, but also the location of the main headquarters of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Claudio, 2018).
Finally, global cities are centers of higher learning and culture. A city’s intellectual influence is
seen through the influence of its publishing industry. Many of the books that people read are
published in places like New York, London, or Paris. The New York Times carries the name of New
York City, but it is far from being a local newspaper. People read it not just across America, but
also all over the world. One of the reasons for the many tourists visiting Boston is because they
want to see Harvard University – the world’s top university. Many Asian teenagers are moving to
cities in Australia because of the leading English-language universities there. Education is
currently Australia’s third largest export, just behind coal and iron ore, and significantly ahead of
tourism. In 2015, the Australian government reported that it made as much as 19.2 billion
Australian dollars (roughly 14 billion US dollars) from education alone.
It is the cultural power of the global cities that ties them to the imagination. Think about how
many songs have been written about New York and how these references conjure up images of a
place where anything is possible – “a concrete jungle where dreams are made of,” according to
Alicia Keys.

Furthermore, according to the lecture of Professor McCarney, Global City Indicators structured
around “themes” organized into two broad categories, namely:
1. City Services; and
2. Quality of Life

City Services must include the following:

a. Education
b. Finance
c. Governance
d. Recreation
e. Transportation
f. Wastewater
g. Energy
h. h. Fire and Emergency Services
i. Health
j. Safety
k. Solid Waste
l. Urban Planning
m. Water

Quality of Life must also include the following:

a. Civic Engagement
b. Economy
c. Shelter
d. Culture
e. Environment
f. Social Equity
g. Technology & innovation

The Challenges of Global City

Global cities conjure up images of fast-paced, exciting, cosmopolitan lifestyle. But such
descriptions are lacking. Global cities also have their undersides. They can be sites of great
inequality and poverty as well as tremendous violence. Like the broader processes of
globalization, global cities create winner and losers. According to Sassen, there were three major
crises that these global cities faced today; financial and economic crises, climate change, and the
third is inequality. (Sassen, 2015)

The Global City and the Poor’

We have consistently noted that economic globalization has paved the way for massive
inequality. These phenomena are thus very pronounced in cities. Some large cities, particularly
those in Scandinavia, have found ways to mitigate inequality through state-led social
redistribution programs. Yet many cities, particularly those in the developing countries, are sites
of contradiction. In places like Mumbai, Jakarta, and Manila, it is common to find gleaming
buildings alongside massive shantytowns. This duality may even be seen in rich, urban cities.
In most of the world’s global cities, the middle class is also thinning out. Globalization creates
high-income jobs that are concentrated in global cities. These high earners, in turn, generate
demand for an unskilled labor force (hotel cleaners, nannies, maids, waitresses, etc.) that will
attend to their increasing needs. Meanwhile, many middle-income jobs in manufacturing and
business process outsourcing (call centers, for example) are moving to other countries. This
hollowing out of the middle class in global cities has heightened the inequality within them. In
places like New York, there are high-rolling American investment bankers whose children are
raised by Filipina maids. A large global city may thus be a paradise for some, but a purgatory for
others.

Time to Connect

Activity 1 - Illustrate the Attributes of a Global City

Direction: Make slide presentation using power point, illustrating the key point attributes of a
global city. The presentation should not exceed 10 slides. Paste the slides on this sheet or send it
via email.

Activity 2 - Exhibit the Cities

Direction: Choose three global cities which are considered as the engine of globalization.
Exhibit each city according to:
A. Business Activity
B. Human Capital
C. Information Exchange
D. Cultural Activities
E. Political Engagement.

Then, present them by doing a video presentation not exceeding 5-minutes. Include musical
background appropriate to your presentation. Finally, send your video through personal message.