Lesson 9

THE GLOBAL CITIES

At the end of the chapter, the student should be able to:

1. Identify the attributes of a global city;

2. Explain the patterns of urban development;
3. Discuss the problems experienced in cities;
4. Discuss the environmental concerns of global cities; and
5. Analyze how cities serve as engines of globalization.
THE RISE OF CITIES

Although the dominance of cities is a relatively recent phenomenon, cities have been
in existence for approximately 9,000 years, and human cultural development is directly
linked to them. In fact, the term civilization comes from the Latin word civis, meaning “a
person living in a city”.

Although the world’s population is still predominantly rural, when human

accomplishments are chronicled, it is the cities that capture most attention. The first cities
apparently developed in the fertile valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; they
resembled overgrown villages of 5,000 to 10,000 people more than modern-day cities.
Nevertheless, these early population centers served many of the same functions that
contemporary cities do, including providing a centralized government, property rights, an
expanded division of labor, and a relatively stable market for the exchange of goods and
services. Throughout the world, important empires were marked by the growth of cities. In
ancient times, while Greek citizens lived throughout the countryside, the cities of Athens
And Sparta epitomized Greek life, and they are still remembered for their contributions to
Western culture. For most of human history, the sights and sounds of great cities such as
Hong Kong, Paris, and New York are simply unimaginable. Our distant ancestors lived in
small, nomadic groups, moving as they depleted vegetation or hunted migratory game. The
tiny settlements that marked the emergence of civilization in the Middle East some 12,000
years ago held only a small fraction of Earth’s people. Today, the largest three or four cities
of the world hold as many people as they entire planet did back then.

The rise of cities is linked to the following factors:

1. Agricultural improvement that reduce the number of workers needed in food

production.
2. Stabilization of political and economic institutions, which enhance safety and
distribution of goods and services.
3. Improvements in transportation and communication, which enhance trade and social
interaction among large number of people.
4. The rise of industrial and postindustrial economies, which demand concentrated
populations to provide labor and services.

In the late 19th century, German sociologist (1855-1937) Ferdinand Tonnies developed
a theoretical continuum to analyze the difference between rural and urban living. He
developed two concepts that have becoming a lasting part of sociology’s terminology.

Tonnies used the German word Gemeinschaft (meaning roughly community) to refer
to a type of social organization in which people are closely tied by kinship and tradition.
Gemeinschaft, is a society made up of a large population characterized by loose
associations, a complex division of labor, secondary relationship, and formal social control.

Tonnies (1961 as cited by Thompson and Hickey, 2006), gemeinschaft communities

share a strong sense of cohesiveness, common values, and a commitment to strive for the
 common good. Cities, by contrast, tend to be gesellschaft communities and more
heterogenous in values, with much less emphasis on common goals. Tonnies ideas
provided a theoretical foundation for both urban and rural sociology in the United States;
investigators focused on differences between rural communities and urban areas and how
these disparities affected basic social structure, institutions, and interaction.

URBANIZATION AND HUMAN ECOLOGY

Urbanization refers to the movement of masses of people from rural to urban areas
and an increase in urban influence over all spheres of culture and society. Social scientist
recognize that the number of people residing within the political boundaries of cities is
less important than the complex communication, transportation, economic, and social
networks that link people in cities and towns to those in suburbs and the surrounding
rural areas. In the United States, their Census Bureau collects and analyze data from
standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) which include a city, or a city and its
surrounding suburbs, with a population of 50,000 or more.
 Urban studies in some affluent countries became closely identified with human
ecology, a subfield of sociology that focuses on recurring spatial, social, and cultural
patterns in a particular social environment, in this case, cities. Human ecologists view a city
as an ecosystem-a community of organisms sharing the same physical environment. Spatial
relations are analytical basis for human ecology, which focuses on the physical shape of
cities, economic and social relations between cities, and social relations and in teraction
between people.

The term urbanization refers to an increase in the proportion of people living in the
cities, and urbanism reflects changes in attitudes, values, and lifestyles resulting from
urbanization. According to Wirth (1978), urbanism affects people negatively because the
city’s large size, high population density, and great heterogeneity lead to impersonality,
anonymity, and such individual problems as loneliness, alcoholism, and suicide. Further,
urbanism entailed a way of life in which the city affects hoe people feel, think, and
interact.
PATTERNS OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Ernest Burgess, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, was interested in how the
ecological arrangement of cities affects the economic resources of groups and individuals and
the degree to which people can profitably utilize urban space. He noticed that lands uses
influence residential patterns and segregation based on race, social class, and other
characteristics of people and places of business. According to Burgess (1925) as cited by
Thompson and Hickey (2006) concentric zone model, cities develop in a series of zones
represented by concentric circles radiating out from the central business district.

Zone 1 – is the central business district- the heart of the city and the center of distribution of
goods and services, it is the location of important businesses, financial institutions, and retail
outlets.

Zone 2 – as Burgess called it, is the zone of transition because it is subject to rapid change. In
many major cities, this area has been where immigrants first settled and established urban
enclaves such as Chinatown and Little Sicily. Zone 2 often reflects the cultures of numerous
foreign countries, and as a result of the marginality experienced by many of its inhabitants,
it is characterized by high rates of delinquency, crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, and
other forms of deviant behavior. Factories often also locate in and around Zone 2, thereby
increasing rail and truck traffic, transients, and pollution. The zone of transition is marked
by urban decay, in part because speculators and absentee landlords who own land and
buildings there do not invest heavily in their maintenance.

Zone 3 – Factory workers and other blue-collar laborers live in Zone 3, which contains
residential hotels, apartments, trailer parks, and other types of working class housing. As
immigrants become assimilated, find jobs, and can afford permanent housing, they often
move into Zone 3.

Zone 4 – is primarily a residential area for middle-class and upper-class housing. Since
World War II, people living in Zone 4 have found it inconvenient and undesirable to drive
downtown to shop, bank, and receive necessary services, so branch banks, shopping malls
Medical clinics, hospitals, and other services have sprung up and in around Zone 4 to meet
their needs.

Zone 5 – is a commuter zone where people live in suburban areas or smaller incorporated
towns far enough away to avoid the undesirable elements of the city (crime, drugs, and so
on) yet close enough to enjoy its amenities (theater, professional sports, and necessary
goods and services) as well as to commute to their place of work.

Burgess’s ecological model provided sociological insight into urban development. Since
then, other urban sociologists have offered models they thought would more accurately
illustrate the process.

THE SECTOR MODEL

According to an American real state economist, Homer Hoyt 1939, as cited by

Thompson and Hickey (2006), the center of the city develops much the way Burgess
described it.
But Hoyt claimed that cities grow outward in several wedge-shaped sectors, each reflecting
differential land use and the congregation of fairly homogenous populations based on race,
ethnicity, and social class. Hoyt contended that suburban middle class housing is not likely
to develop next to inner-city ghettos but instead develops outward from lower-middle-class
housing areas. Likewise, after these, middle-class neighborhoods have developed,
wealthier suburban housing adjacent to them. Factories and other forms of industry are
not allowed to locate in these housing areas and therefore develop in another sector,
usually along major arteries of transportation (especially major highways and railroad
lines).

THE MULTIPLE-NUCLEI MODEL

Urban sociologists Chauncey Harris and Edward Ullman (1945, as cited by Thompson
and Hickey, 2006) offered yet another explanation of urban development with their
multiple-nuclei model or multicentered model. According to their model, cities evolve from
several nuclei that shape the character and structure of the areas surrounding them.
For example, the central business district serves as one important nucleus while a college
or university across town serve as another. If the community has a prison, it might serve as
another distinct nucleus for development, and a major manufacturing plant would provide
the nucleus for yet another area.

The models proposed by Burgess, Hoyt and Harris and Ullman are just that models
representing ideal types. The models may or may not accurately described the specific
development of actual cities. Nevertheless, they provide important sociological insights as
to how spatial relationships and differential land use affect population patterns and social
life.

METROPOLIS, MEGAPOLIS, AND SUBURBS

Most global cities from 1900 through the mid-1960s, urbanization patterns reflected a
steady migration from rural to urban areas. Over the past three decades, however, while
cities have continued to grow, most migration has been into the fringe
Areas around major cities. The traditional concept of the city grew increasingly inadequate
to describe urbanization in the case of global cities such as London, Paris, New York, and
Tokyo. The newer term metropolis means a major urban area that includes a large central
city surrounded by several smaller incorporated cities and suburbs that join to form one
large recognizable municipality. The greater metropolitan area of New York City for
example, has a population of over 17 million and includes people who live in the city’s five
boroughs-Manhattan, the Bronx, Brookly, Queens, and Staten Island and Westchester
Country and even in Connecticut and New Jersey. Similarly, Los Angeles has absorbed the
communities of Anaheim, Beverly Hills, and several satellite cities, and today metropolitan
Los Angeles includes at least nine separate cities and 60 self-governing communities.
Metropolitan Manila, in this case with a population of more than 12 million people
includes the cities of Manila, Quezon, Pasay, Caloocan, Paranaque, Mandaluyong, Pasig, Las
Pinas, San Juan, Marikina, Valenzuela, Navotas, Malabon, Taguig, Muntinlupa, Makati, and
the municipality of Pateros.

As a major metropolitan areas have continued to absorb smaller surrounding

Cities, an even larger urban unit has developed. The megapolis consists of two or more
major metropolitan areas linked politically, economically, socially, and geographically. In the
United States, for example, along the Eastern seaboard, a chain of hundreds of cities and
suburbs now stretches from Boston through Washington, D.C., to Richmond, Virginia, in an
almost continuous urban sprawl. Similarly, much of Florida also in the United States is
almost one continuous city, from Jacsonville through Tampa to Miami, Dallas and Forth
Worth, once two distinct cities 30 miles apart, now are linked by an international airport
and a nearly unbroken band of suburban communities. Urban sprawl joins Chicago to
Pittsburg. Along the West Cost, a huge megapolis stretches from San Diego through Los
Angeles and up to San Francisco and Oakland, with only a few breaks. Migration pattern
reflect a move from older cities in the northeastern part of the United States (sometimes
dubbed the “rust belt” because of its decaying factories) to cities in the sun belt of the
south and southwest. In fact, over half of the U.S population growth during the decade of
the 1980’s occurred in three states: California, Texas, and Florida. It is predicted that if
those trends continue, even more megapolis or “super cities will emerge in the sunbelt
states.
 The expansion of the interstate highway systems, including loops around najor cities,
made it easier for disenchanted city dwellers to leave the congestion of the city and move
into surrounding neighborhoods, (called suburbs) from which they could easily commute
to their jobs. The shortage of desirable housing in many cities, combined with rapid
economic expansion and the availability of moderately priced housing in outlying areas,
made suburban living attractive and economically practical for working class and middle
class families. Suburbs are residential areas surrounding cities, which expand urban
lifestyle into formerly rural areas.

Perhaps the most important variable, however, was the idyllic stereotype of suburban
living promoted by the mass media. According to television, motion pictures, and popular
magazines, the suburbs provided all the amenities of urban life yet were far enough away
to avoid the hassles of the city.
PROBLEM IN CITIES

1. The greatest problem facing major cities is generating enough revenue to provide
adequate services and protection for their residents. Most major cities raise taxes to
compensate for shrinking revenues but this in turn encourages more residents and
businesses to flee the city and locate in surrounding suburb.

2. Urban decay hits the central city as major businesses move from the downtown area to
to more profitable suburban locations. Old buildings subsequently either remain vacant
and deteriorate or become multiple-unit slum housing, low-rent hotels, “adult”
bookstore and theaters, centers for drug distribution and other criminal activities, and
repositories for the urban homeless.

3. The central cities have increasingly become the domicile of the poor. Although many of
the poor reside in rural areas, the proportion of urban poor increased between 1980
And 1990. Much urban poverty is a result of a growing urban underclass of poorly
educated and unskilled minorities who lack the skills and education to make the transition
from an industrial to a service economy.

4. Urban problems continue to exist such as chronic unemployment, homelessness, violent

crimes, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, and other forms of deviance.

5. Inner-city decay. Even if some city governments in global cities attempt to revitalize
central cities by razing dilapidated buildings and replacing them with modern high-rise
office buildings, apartment complexes, and condominiums, they could not contain the
proliferation of street people, drug dealers, and prostitutes who do their illegal trades,
especially during night time.