THE GLOBAL CITY

What is Global City?

 A global city has wealth, power and influence to other countries as well as hosts the
largest capital markets.
 a city that has wealthy multinational companies, good infrastructure, better economy,
well-educated and diverse populations and powerful organizations
 privileged
 as well as a good political structure that are linked to the other parts of the world like
nowhere else is considered to be global
 influential city that covers the dimensions of the globalization. These dimensions are
cultural experience, business activity, human capital as well as political engagement.
 a global city needs to have a lot of capital, information on trade, business and
multinational companies
Is that globalization is spatial? This statement means two things.
 First, globalization is spatial because it occurs in physical spaces.
o You can see it when foreign investments and capital move through a city, and
when companies build skyscrapers. People who are working in these businesses--
or Filipinos working abroad start to purchase or rent high-rise condominium units
and better homes. As all these events happen, more poor people are driven out of
city centers to make way for the new developments.
 Second, globalization is spatial because what makes it move is the fact that it is based in
places.
o Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, is where movies are made for global
consumption. The main headquarters of Sony is in Tokyo, and from there, the
company coordinates the sale of its various electronics goods to branches across
the world. In other words, cities act on globalization and globalization acts on
cities. They are the sites as well as the mediums of globalization. Just as the
internet enables and shapes global forces, so too do cities.
 This lesson studies globalization through the living environment of a rapidly
increasing number of people.
DEFINING THE GLOBAL CITY
 Sociologist Saskia Sassen popularized the term "global city" in the 1990s.
o Her criteria for what constitute a global city were primarily economic.
o three global cities: New York, London, and Tokyo, all of which are hubs of
global finance and capitalism."
o They are the homes, for instance, of the world's top stock exchanges where
investors buy and sell shares in major corporations.
 New York has the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE),
o New York City is considered to be a global city because it has
powerful organizations that are linked to the other parts and
many of the major corporations and multinational companies are
headquartered in this city.
 o A global city needs to have a lot of capital, information on trade,
business and multinational companies. New York City has all
this.
 London has the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE),
o London is a city where businesses thrive. of the world's foreign
equities are traded here, this figure is larger than that of New
York.
o Business and economic activities- Services in the business
industry also present a major source of income for the Londoners.
o Population- Increased population has the advantage of increased
human resource and also the presence of a ready market for
goods and services.
 Tokyo has the Nikkei (Japanese business newspaper). The amount of
money traded in these markets is staggering
o world's largest financial newspaper, with a daily circulation
exceeding three million

 The global economy has changed significantly since Sassen wrote her book, and any
account of the economic power of cities today must take note of the latest developments.
 Recent commentators have expanded the criteria that Sassen used to determine what
constitutes a global city.
 Though it is not as wealthy as New York, movie-making mecca Los Angeles can now
rival the Big Apple's cultural influence.
 San Francisco must now factor in as another global city because it is the home of the
most powerful internet companies--Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
 Finally, the growth of the Chinese economy has turned cities like Shanghai, Beijing,
and Guangzhou into centers of trade and finance.
 The Chinese government reopened the Shanghai Stock Exchange in late 1990, and
since then, it has grown to become the fifth largest stock market in the world.
 Others consider some cities "global" simply because they are great places to live in.
 In Australia, Sydney commands the greatest proportion of capital.
o is the country’s largest city
o Sydney is the economic and financial centre of Australia and has
become a thriving and affluent city,
o It is home to the headquarters of the Australian Stock Exchange
and the Reserve Bank of Australia.
o also serves as the regional headquarters for numerous
multinational corporations.

 Melbourne is described as Sydney's rival (competitor) "global city" because many

magazines and lists have now referred to it as the world's most livable city"
o a place with good public transportation, a thriving cultural scene,
and a relatively easy pace of life.

 Sassen remains correct in saying that economic power largely determines which
cities are global.
 New York may have the largest stock market in the world, but Tokyo houses the greatest
number of corporate headquarters company headquarters as against 217 in New York, its
closest competitor)."
 Shanghai may have a smaller stock market compared to New York and Tokyo but
plays a critical role in the global economic supply chain ever since China has become
the manufacturing center of the world.
 Shanghai has the world's busiest container port, moving over 33 million container
units in 2013.

 Since the 1970s, many of the top IT programmers and engineers from Asia have moved
to the San Francisco Bay Area to become some of the key figures in Silicon Valley's
technology boom.

 London remains a preferred destination for many Filipinos with nursing degrees.

 To measure the economic competitiveness of a city.

o The Economist Intelligence Unit has added other criteria like
market size, purchasing power of citizens, size of the middle
class, and potential for growth.
o Based on these criteria , "tiny" Singapore is considered Asia's
most competitive city because of its strong market, efficient and
incorruptible government, and livability.
o It also houses the regional offices of many major global
corporations.

 Global cities are also centers of authority.

o Washington D.C. may not be as wealthy as New York, but it is the seat of
American state power.
o 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.
o 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.

 The cities that house major international organizations may also be considered
centers of political influence.
o The headquarters of the United Nations is in New York, and that of the European
Union is in Brussels.
o An influential political city near the Philippines is Jakarta, which is not just
the capital of Indonesia, but also the location of the main headquarters of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
o Powerful political hubs exert influence on their own countries as well as on
international affairs.
o The European Central Bank, which oversees the Euro (the European Union's
currency), is based in Frankfurt. A decision made in that city can, therefore,
affect the political economy of an entire continent and beyond.
  Finally, global cities are centers of higher learning and culture.
o A city's intellectual influence is seen through the influence of its publishing
industry.
 We have already explained why Los Angeles, the center of the American film industry,
may be considered a global city.
 Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark.
o It is not the home of a major stock market, and its population is rather
homogenous. However,
o Copenhagen is now considered one of the culinary capitals of the world, with
its top restaurants incommensurate with its size. As the birthplace of "New
Nordic" cuisine, Copenhagen has set into motion various culinary trends like
foraging the forests for local ingredients. Similarly, Manchester, England in the
1980s was a dreary industrial city. But many prominent post-punk and New Wave
bands-Joy Division, the Smiths, the Happy Mondays-hailed from this city,
making it a global household name. In Southeast Asia, Singapore (again) is
slowly becoming a cultural hub for the region. It now houses some of the region's
top television stations and news organizations (MTV Southeast Asia and Channel
News Asia). Its various art galleries and cinemas also show paintings from artists
and filmmakers, respectively, from the Philippines and Thailand. It is in fact,
sometimes easier to watch the movie of a Filipino indie filmmaker in Singapore
than it is in Manila!
It is the cultural power of global cities that ties them to the imagination. Think about how many
songs have been written about New York (Jay Z and Alicia Keys's "Empire State of Mind,"
Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," and numerous songs by Simon and Garfunkel) 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.
Today, global cities become culturally diverse. In a global city, one can try cuisines from
different parts of the world. Because of their large Turkish populations, for example, Berlin and
Tokyo offer some of the best Turkish food one can find outside of Turkey. Manila is not very
global because of the dearth of foreign residents (despite the massive domestic migration), but
Singapore is, because it has a foreign population of 38%.
The Challenges of Global Cities
Global cities conjure up images of fast-paced, exciting, cosmopolitan lifestyles. 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 winners and losers.
In this section, we list some "pathologies" of the global city, based on the research of the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Cities can be sustainable because of their density. As Richard Florida notes: "Ecologists have
found that by concentrating their populations in smaller areas, cities and metros decrease human
encroachment on natural habitats. Denser settlement patterns yield energy savings; apartment
buildings, for example, are more efficient to heat and cool than detached suburban houses."
Moreover, in cities with extensive public transportation systems, people tend to drive less and
thereby cut carbon emissions. It is no surprise to learn that, largely because of the city's extensive
train system, New Yorkers have the lowest per capita carbon footprint in the United States. In
Asia, dense global cities like Singapore and Tokyo also have relatively low per capita carbon
footprints.
Not all cities, however, are as dense as New York or Tokyo. Some cities like Los Angeles are
urban sprawls, with massive freeways that force residents to spend money on cars and gas. And
while cities like Manila, Bangkok, and Mumbai are dense, their lack of public transportation and
their governments' inability to regulate their car industries have made them extremely polluted.
More importantly, because of the sheer size of city populations across the world, it is not
surprising that urban areas consume most of the world's energy. Cities only cover 2 percent of
the world's landmass, but they consume 78 precent of global energy Therefore, if carbon
emissions must be cut to prevent global warming, this massive energy consumption in cities
must be curbed. This action will require a lot of creativity. For example, many food products
travel many miles before they get to major city centers. Shipping this food through trains, buses,
and even planes increases carbon emissions. Will it be possible to grow more food in cities
instead? Solutions like so-called "vertical farms built in abandoned buildings (as is increasingly
being done in New York) may lead the way towards more environmentally sustainable cities If
more food can be grown with less water in denser spaces, cities will begin to be greener.
The major terror attacks of recent years have also targeted cities. Cities, especially those with
global influence, are obvious targets for terrorists due to their high populations and their role as
symbols of globalization that many terrorists despise. The same attributes that make them
attractive to workers and migrants make them sites of potential terrorist violence. Only by
looking from this perspective will we be able to understand the 9/11 attacks that brought down
the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and the November 2015 coordinated
attacks in Paris by zealots of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Now that real estate
magnate Donald Trump is the president of the United States, security experts believe that
properties around the world that carry his name may be targets of terror attacks. There are Trump
Towers, for example, in places like Istanbul and Manila.
The Global City and the Poor
We have consistently noted that economic globalization has paved the way for massive
inequality. This phenomenon is 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 the outskirts of New York and San Francisco are poor urban enclaves occupied by African-
Americans and immigrant families who are often denied opportunities at a better life. Slowly,
they are being forced to move farther away from the economic centers of their cities. As a city
attracts more capital and richer residents, real estate prices go up and poor residents are forced to
relocate to far away but cheaper areas. This phenomenon of driving out the poor in favor of
newer, wealthier residents is called “gentrification”.

In Australian cities, poor aboriginal Australians have been most acutely affected by this process.
Once living in public urban housing, they were forced to move farther away from city centers
that offer more jobs, more government services, and better transportation due to gentrification. In
France, poor Muslim migrants are forced out of Paris and have clustered around ethnic enclaves
known as “banlieue”

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.

Conclusion

Global cities, as noted in this lesson, are sites and mediums of globalization. They are, therefore,
material representations of the phenomenon. Through them, we see the best of globalization;
they are places that create exciting fusions of culture and ideas. They are also places that
generate tremendous wealth. However, they remain sites of great inequality, where global
servants serve global entrepreneurs. The question of how globalization can be made more just is
partly a question of how people make their cities more just.