Topic 2: Globalization and Global Cities

1. Topic 2:Globalization and Global Cities

2. Globalization and Global Cities • Q1. What is a global city? • Q2. How did globalization take place? • Themes: • 1. Globalization and City • 2. The development of Hong Kong as a global city

3. The Characteristics of World Cities • The hub points in the global network are world cities. • The term “world cities” was first coined by Patrick Geddes in 1915; he defined them as places where world’s business was done.

4. Definition • John Friedman (1986), “World city hypothesis”, in which he defined world city as: • basing points in the spatial organization and articulation of production and markets; • major sites for the concentration and accumulation of international capital;

5. Definition • centers of corporate headquarters, international finance, global transport and communications, and high level business services; • points of destination for both domestic and international migrants.

6. Definition Saskia Sassen (1991)’s The Global City identified them in four ways: • key locations for finance and specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading economic services; • sites of production, including the production of innovations, in leading industries;

7. Definition • highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy; • markets for the products and innovations produced.

8. Definition • Cities concentrate control over vast resources, while finance and specialized service industries have restructured the urban social and economic order. • Not mere outcomes of a global economic machine, but specific places where internal dynamics, culture and social structure matter.

9. Sites of Production • Sassen argues global cities are not only nodal points for the coordination of processes, but particular sites of production:

10. Sites of Production • the production of specialized services needed by complex organizations for running a dispersed network of factories, offices, and service outlets; • the production of financial innovations and the making of markets, both central to the internationalization and expansion of the financial industry.

11. Sites of Production • understand it as a place where certain kinds of work can get done. • get beyond the dichotomy between manufacturing and services. • “things”, a global city produces are services and financial goods.

12. Differences in global cities: • New York is more decentralized and multipolar urban system • Tokyo with little of the cultural diversity or dynamism • London has a long history of a colonial, imperial city

13. Miami Frankfurt Amsterdam Second-tier global cities: • Little consensus in the global city literature • Friedmann (1995) identifies Miami, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Singapore as second-order centers.

14. Manila Kuala Lumpur Jakarta Second-tier global cities: • Yeung and Lo (1997) include all the big cities in Asia: Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Jakarta.

15. Second-tier global cities: • Cities which are competing for world city status, are called “wannabe world cities” (Short 1996). • Global city: an ongoing competitive struggle and the inherent instability of this system.

16. Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Command Centers • control, command and management centers - regulate global manufacturing production, financial transactions, producer services and telecommunications networks.

17. Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Command Centers • transnational corporate headquarters - house the crucial institutions of economic globalization, such as, stock markets, advertising agencies and teleports. • Center of cultural hegemony- concentration of cultural festivals like music, film or dance festivals in New York.

18. Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Socio-cultural infrastructure • Amin and Thrift (1994) identify three important elements: • Centers provide the face-to-face contact needed to generate collective beliefs. New York Central Park

19. Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Socio-cultural infrastructure • Centers are needed to enable social and cultural interaction, that is, to act as places of sociability, of gathering information, establishing coalitions, maintaining trust, and developing rules of behaviors.

20. Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Socio-cultural infrastructure • Centers are needed to develop, test and track innovations, to provide a critical mass of knowledgeable people and socio-institutional networks. "centers of representation, interaction and innovation" Silicon Valley

22. Ghetto in New York City Chinatown in New York City Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Social polarization: winners and losers • the richest and the poorest members of society • increasing capital intensity of production and large-scale immigration of foreign workers

23. Vendor in New York City Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Social polarization: winners and losers • the paradoxical relationship- between the growth of finance and producer services and the increase of an informal economy in these cities

24. Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Social polarization: winners and losers • Services sector produces a larger share of low-wage jobs than manufacturing does.

25. Three Major Aspects of Global Cities • Social polarization: winners and losers • New concepts like "dual cities" or "divided cities" - to illustrate the fact that world cities contain the extremes of wealth and poverty

26. Social polarization: winners and losers What is this? This is a senior staff quarters of a local university. • Example in Hong Kong But what is this?

27. Social polarization: winners and losers • Example in Hong Kong This a home of an old woman. She was living here at least 6 years.

28. Social polarization: winners and losers Can you imagine that an old woman still using woods for cooking just beside a university, not in N.T., and in Hong Kong such a affluent society? • Example in Hong Kong

29. Social polarization: winners and losers • disproportionate flows of skilled international migrants • huge cross-border movements of financial specialists, banking professionals, managers and high-tech talents in global cities

30. Social polarization: winners and losers • process of professionalization vs process of polarization VS

31. Social polarization: winners and losers • The depiction of New York by Castells (1993) can be best summed up: • "Wall Street may make New York one of the nerve centers of the global capitalist system, but this dominant position has a dark side in the ghettos and barrios where a growing population of poor people lives.”

32. Globalization and The Asia-Pacific Region • Major cities along the Asia-Pacific Corridor - the new sites of global manufacturing production • A regional city system- Yeung and Lo (1996) called this as the Asia-Pacific functional city system.

33. Globalization and The Asia-Pacific Region • A function city system is: • “a network of cities that are linked, often in a hierarchical manner based on a given economic or socio-political function at the global or regional level.”

34. Globalization and The Asia-Pacific Region • Asia-Pacific urban corridor: • stretching between Tokyo and north-east China, via the two Koreas, to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, makes up the east Asian regional city system.

35. Globalization and The Asia-Pacific Region • Cities networked into the functional city system have not developed uniformly: • on the top of the urban hierarchy include the major capital exporters. (eg, Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei).

36. Globalization and The Asia-Pacific Region • Major industrial FDI recipients (e.g. Jakarta, Shanghai and Bangkok). • Two entrepots (Hong Kong and Singapore) • Some cities serve as tourist cities.

37. Conclusion • Global city formation is a continuing and varied process. • Asian scholars developed their own views of studying global cities in the Pacific Region.