URBAN GEOGRAPHY

from global to local

 The Economy
• Competitive capitalism
-Characterized by free-market competition between locally oriented
businesses, and laissez-faire economic (and urban) development largely
unconstrained by government regulation.
• Organized capitalism
- Originates in Marxist political sociology. Capitalism as an. organizing social
principle refers to the role market forces play in our contemporary world. Market
forces favor the concentration of the modes of production in the hands.
• Disorganized capitalism
- A term used by political sociologists such as John Urry, Scott Lash, and Claus Offe
to describe the fragmentation of socio-economic groups in the economy, state,
and civil society of advanced capitalism
• Fordism
-is "the eponymous manufacturing system designed to spew out
standardized, low-cost goods and afford its workers decent enough wages
to buy them."
 TECHNOLOGY

• Technological changes which are integral to economic changes.

• Influence the pattern of urban growth and change
• Telecommunication have had a marked impact on the global
economy
• New international division labour
• Macro-level technological change
• Technological changes affect directly the urban form.
• Advances in transportation technology
• Development of skyscraper.
 DEMOGRAPHY

•Demographic changes are among

the most direct influences on
urbanization and urban change.
•Movements of people, into and out
from cities, shape the size,
configuration and social
composition of cities.
 COMPOSITION OF CITIES...

- Residential space
- Transportation networks
- Economic activities
- Service infrastructure
- Commercial areas
- Public buildings & spaces
- Creative spaces &
- Competitive Hubs
 POLITICS

• The urban impact of political change is demonstrated

by the case of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union.
• The development of new towns and reorganization of
existing cities reflected the imperatives of command
economy and centralized political apparatus.
• Within Western societies, changes in political ideology
and subsequent modifications of economic and urban
policy have had major impacts on city development.
• Politics and economics exist in a reciprocal
relationship, the outcomes of which can have a major
impact on urban change.
 SOCIETY

• Macro-scale social changes can have a significant

impact in the character of towns and cities.
• Popular attitudes towards ethnic or lifestyle minorities
can determine migration flows between countries and
cities, as well as underlying patterns of residential
segregation within cities.
• In a similar manner, the attitude of society towards
other minority groups, such as single-parent
households, the unemployed, disabled people and
elderly people, and towards women, conditions their
status and location in the city.
 CULTURE

• One of the most significant of cultural changes in Western

society the post-Second World War era, particularly from the
late 1970s onwards, has been the rise of materialism.
• At the urban scale this is manifested in the appearance of a
“cappuccino society” characterized by stores selling designer
clothes, wine bars, pavement cafes, gentrification, yuppies,
marble and bumper stickers proclaiming “ Dear Santa, I want it
all.”
• The effect of cultural change on cities is encapsulated in the
concept of postmodernity or post-modernism.
• Post modern urbanism is also evident in the growth of cultural
industries and in the regeneration of historic urban districts.
 ENVIRONMENT

•The impacts of environmental change on

patterns of urbanization and urban
change are seen at a number of
geographic scales.
•At the local scale, “natural” phenomena
such as earthquakes and landslides can
force the abandonment of settlements or
require major works of reconstruction, as
in Mexico City after the 1985 earthquake.
GLOBALISATION & THE CITY
Economic globalisation: social arrangement of
economic relations of production, distribution, &
exchange of goods and services.
Political globalisation: government takes actions
upon responsibilities such as economical issues,
welfare of the citizens as an international whole.
Cultural globalisation: arrangement for the
production, exchange & expression of ‘symbols’
that represent meaning, values, beliefs etc. leading
to a production of a so-called cosmopolitan urban
lifestyles that embrace multiculturalism e.g.
organised spectacles like BIG Concerts events;
ga-events (FIFA & Olympic Games)
GLOBALISATION IN PRACTICE
GLOCALISATION: THE
LOCALISATION OF THE GLOBAL
• de-localisation or de-territorialisation
evident, for example, in the instantaneity
of e-mail communication across the
globe;
• re-localisation or re-territorialisation,
whereby global influences interact with
and are transformed within local context
as, for example, in the creation of historic
heritage districts in cities.