The Global City

Why Study Global Cities?

So far, much of the analysis of globalization in the previous lessons has looked at how
ideas of internationalism shaped modern world politics. We also examined cultural
movements like K-pop, and how they spread through media like the internet. What this
lesson will emphasize, however, is that globalization is spatial. This statement means
two things.
First, globalization is spatial because ti occurs in physical spaces. You can see ti 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 ti move is the fact
that ti is based in places. 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 docities.
In the years to come, more and more people will experience globalization through cities.
In 1950, only 30 percent of the world lived in urban areas. By 2014, that number
increased to 54 percent. And by 2050, it is expected to reach 66 percent. 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. Her criteria
for what constitute a global city were primarily economic. In her work, she initially
identified three global cities: New York, London, and Tokyo, al of which are hubs of
global finance and capitalism." 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), London has
the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE), and Tokyo has the Nikkei. The amount of
money traded in these markets is staggering. The value of shares traded ni the NYSE,
for example, is $19,300 billion, while that of
the shares in the Philippine Stock Exchange is only $231.3 billion.

Limiting the discussion of global cities to these three metropolises, however, is proving
more and more restrictive. The since Sassen wrote hebrook, and any account of the
economic power of cities today
global economy has changed significantly must take note of the latest developments.
Recent commentators have expanded the criteria that Sassen used to determine what
constitutes a global city. Though ti 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 ti 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. However, Melbourne is described as Sydney's
rival "global city" because many magazines and lists have now referred to it as the
world's "most livable city"-a place with good
public transportation, a thriving cultural scene, and a relatively easy pace of life.
Defining a global city can thus be difficult. One way of solving this dilemma is to go
beyond the simple dichotomy of global and non-global. Instead of asking whether or not
one city is a global city (a yes or no question), ti is better to ask: In what ways are cities
global and to what extent are they global?

Indicators for Globality

So, what are the multiple attributes of the global city? The foremost characteristic is
economic power. Sassen remains correct in saying that economic power largely
determines which cities are
global. New York may have the largest stock market ni the world but Tokyo houses the
most number of corporate headquarters (613 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 3 million container units in 2013.

Economic opportunities in a global city make it attractive to talents from across the
world. Since the 1970s, many of the top TI 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, The Economist Intelligence Unit
has added other criteria like market size, purchasing power of citizens, size of the
middle class, and potential for growth. Based on these criteria, "tiny" Singapore is
considered Asia's most competitive city because of its strong
market, efficient and incorruptible government, and livability." It also housestheregional
officesof many major global corporations. Global cities are also centers of authority.
Washington D.C. may not be as wealthy as New York, but ti 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 isa sleepy town and thus is not as attractive to
tourists. But a s Australia's political capital, ti si 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. The headquarters fothe United Nations si in New York, and that of
the European Union si in Brussels. 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 o f Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Powerful
political hubs exert influence on their own countries as well as on international affairs.
The European Central Bank, which oversees the Euro (the European Union's currency),
is based ni Frankfurt. Adecision 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. 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. 100 We have
already explained why Los Angeles, the center of the American film industry, may be
considered a global city. A less obvious example, however, is Copenhagen, the capital
of Denmark. It is so small that one can tour the entire city by bicycle in thirty minutes. It
is not the home of a major stock market, and its population is rather homogenous.
However, 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%.101

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.102. 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."103
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.104 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. 105 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 increase 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 maior 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
fransportation 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.