GLOBAL POPULATION AND MOBILITY Chapter V.

Unit 1

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Chapter V. Unit 1

THE GLOBAL CITY

Objectives
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1. To Identify the attributes of a global city
2. To analyze how cities serve as engines of globalization
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I. The Concept of Global City

The eradication of trade barriers and the reduction in transportation and

communication costs, made individuals very mobile. The unprecedented mobility of
individuals became evident in the contemporary period. Places that offer the products
of globalization become the target of these individuals. As a result, these places
eventually became centers of globalization. Scholars such as Saskia Sassen identified
these places and named them as ‘global cities’. “The global city is therefore the main
physical and geographic playground of the globalizing forces’(Colic-Peisker, 2014).
Sassen argued that the concept of gobal city is associated with the flow of
information and capital. Cities are major nodes in the interconnected systems of
information and money, and the wealth that they capture is intimately related to the
specialized businesses that facilitate those flows. Sassen also pointed out that these
flows are no longer tightly bound to national boundaries and systems of regulation
(Little, 2013).
Associated with the concept of global city is the idea of cosmopolitanism. he idea
of cosmopolitanism usually invokes pleasant images of travel, exploration and
“worldly” pursuits enjoyed by those who have benefited from globalization and who
can, in some ways, consider themselves “citizens of the world” (Colic-Peisker ,2010).
However, in the capitalist context, such cosmopolitanism often focuses on consumption
in global cities, where everyday life is significantly shaped by commercial culture, retail
and shopping (Zukin, 1998: 827). Corollary, Sassen’s idea of global city focuses on the
flow of capital and information.

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From her arguments about the modern global city, she stressed seven
hypotheses:
1 The geographic dispersal of economic activities that marks globalization, along
with the simultaneous integration of such geographically dispersed activities, is a
key factor feeding the growth and importance of central corporate functions.
2 These central functions become so complex that increasingly the headquarters of
large global firms outsource them: they buy a share of their central functions
from highly specialized service firms.
3 Those specialized service firms engaged in the most complex and globalized
markets are subject to agglomeration economies.
4 The more headquarters outsource their most complex, unstandardized functions,
particularly those subject to uncertain and changing markets, the freer they are to
opt for any location.
5 These specialized service firms need to provide a global service which has meant
a global network of affiliates ... and a strengthening of cross border city-to-city
transactions and networks.
6 The economic fortunes of these cities become increasingly disconnected from
their broader hinterlands or even their national economies.
7 One result of the dynamics described in hypothesis six, is the growing
informalization of a range of economic activities which find their effective
demand in these cities, yet have profit rates that do not allow them to compete
for various resources with the high-profit making firms at the top of the system
Little, 2013).

From these hypotheses, Little citing Sassen pointed three key tendencies that
seem to follow:

1. concentration of wealth in the hands of owners, partners, and professionals

associated with the high-end firms in this system;
2. growing disconnection between the city and its region;
3. growth of a large marginalized population that has a very hard time earning a living
in the marketplace defined by these high-end activities

From these tendencies, modern global cities are gradually becoming known for
these features:

1. a widening separation in quality of life between a relatively small elite and a much
larger marginalized population;
2. a growth of high-security gated communities and shopping areas; and

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3. dramatically different graphs of median income for different socioeconomic groups

(Sassen, 1991: Little, 2013).

From these features, Sassen identified three global cities based on primarily
economic criteria. These cities are New York, London and Tokyo. Global cities,
according to Sassen, are the ‘com- mand centres’, the main nodes of triumphant global
capitalism (’(Colic-Peisker, 2014).

However, decades after Sassen launched the concept of global city, more and
more cities worldwide are moving to attain the status as global cities. Contemporary
global cities are becomingly known for these transformative features:

1. concentration of not only financial but ‘productive services’ such as information

technology, law and accountancy
2. home to finance, commerce and research and development, facilitated by massive
foreign capital inflows - China (Wu, 2000)
3. efficient global transport infrastructure and growing professional service sector
(Singapore)
4. ‘symbolic economy’, based on abstract products such as financial instruments,
information and ‘culture’ (arts, fashion, music, etc.)
5. ‘landscapes of consumption’ (Zukin, 1998: 825)
6. concentrations of geopolitical power, and cultural and trendsetting powerhouses,
higher education hubs and playgrounds of creative industries (e.g. arts, fashion and
design)
7. its key workforce is the professional class. These ‘knowledge workers’ are not
necessarily part of the core wealth and power elite of global capitalism, but are a
highly (globally) mobile, career-minded middle class (Colic-Peisker, 2010).
8. global cities are characterized by occupational and income polarization (Sassen,
1991)
9. represent ‘brain hubs’ (concentrations of innovative people and firms)(Moretti,
2012; Solimano, 2006)
10. Provide good ‘human ecosystems’ for cutting-edge businesses, providing all the
support functions or ‘secondary services’ for the innovators (Moretti, 2012;
Solimano, 2006).

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From these contemporary features, Colic-Peisker pointed out that the list of
global cities expanded in the twenty first century. Following the criteria set by the
Japanese Mori Foundation for the determination of global cities is the declaration of the
following as global cities:

1. New York
2. London
3. Paris
4. Tokyo
5. Singapore

The criteria set by the Japanese Mori Foundation’s Global Power City Index are as
follow:

1. economy,
2. research and development,
3. cultural interaction, liveability,
4. environment and
5. accessibility

II. Mobility and Migration

The modern global city’s ability to attract the creative and innovative minds led
to the influx of professional migrants. If a city possesses this ability then it deserves the
status of a global city. This ‘magnetic character’ (as called by the Japanese Mori
Foundation) of global cities entails the hyper-mobility of young professionals whose
services are always in-demand in major cities worldwide. As a consequence of their
hyper-mobility, life in the global city is always fluid. As a consequence of the fluid
lifestyle and needs of these knowledge workers the services of the low-paid workers
coming from the outskirts of the region are also needed. Thus, the influx of
professionals in the commercial centres brought with it the concomitant increase of
‘low-paid workers who deliver personal and labour-intensive services: cleaning, child-
care, delivery, res- taurants and eateries, catering, maintenance, transport, hotels,
domestic help and retail’ (Sassen, 1991; Zukin, 1998; Colic-Peisker, 2010).

This pattern of migration in the global city gave birth to economic and social
polarization and gentrification. According to Sassen (1991), global cities are
characterized by occupational and income polarization, with the highly paid profes-
sional class on the one end and providers of low-paid services on the other (Colic-
Peisker, 2010) . Related to the idea of polarization is the concept of gentrification which

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Colic-Peisker described as a process of social class polarization and residential

segregation of the affluent from the poor.

III. Polarization in the Global City (Manifestations)

Housing

Gentrified Inner City Outer Areas

• Have expensive real estate because in a • The opposite happens with less attractive
highly developed and sensitive housing and less liveable outer areas with fewer job
mar- ket (a ‘thick’, dynamic housing market opportunities and services (Wood, 2004)
with much supply and demand) the
attractive features and advantages of an
urban area end up being readily capitalized
into higher property prices.

Workforce

Professional, inventors and innovative Low-skilled service workers

workforce

• most footloose • often move jobs by necessity

• having in general more control and • not as ready to move between cities and
autonomy in their workplace countries
• often change jobs and many are ready to
relocate to another city or country

• “cosmopolitans” according to Merton (1968) • “locals” according to Merton (1968)

• The ‘cosmopolitans’ (Gouldner, 1989: 401, • The community life of ‘locals’ was
calls them ‘itinerants’) were, more preoccupied with local problems.
‘ecumenical’ and sought social status
outside the local community, usually from
their professional peers, because their local
community could neither validate nor
reward their professional competence
(Merton, 1968; Colic-Peisker, 2010).

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IV. Community in the Global City

There is no cosmopolitanism without diversity (Colic-Peisker, 2010). This is the

evident feature of a global city. The polarization that the global city possess leads to a
diversified population. This diversity could either unify or disintegrate a given
community.

As a city of opportunities, global cities will continue to ‘attract the extremes of

poor, migrant and footloose populations, but also the affluent and the super rich/
(Colic-Peisker, 2010). The migration of this segmented population will give birth to an
economically, socially and culturally diverse population. Consequently, ‘global cities
become a home to a visible set of protagonists of the ‘urban life- style’: artists,
bohemians, new media designers, gay and youth subcultures, university students and
immigrants, creating a remarkable and also highly visible ‘ethnic’ and cultural diversity.
These groups with their more of less ‘alternative’ and eclectic lifestyles have a natural
home in ‘global cities’, and exert a singular influence in defining various urban
subcultures, often giving character to certain areas within big cities’ (Colic-Peisker,
2010).

Within this colourful urban diversity also reside different types of marginalities
based on gender, ethnicity, culture and class: single mothers, lesbians, recent immigrant
and refugee groups, backpackers, the homeless, the elderly, all those who indeed cannot
be so readily integrated into the dominant economic paradigm. Their social purpose is
therefore in the realm of community – usually rather marginal and mutually segregated
communities sharing geographical places but not lifestyles and life-worlds. One of the
flipsides of this is that coexistence of various disparate groups does not constitute a
wider city community, and fragmentation born out of diversity rarely leads to active
citizenship. Consumption, style, work and commercialized leisure take priority over
public and civic concerns as long as the urban space is functional for a majority of its
residents. Because of this disparity, the character of a nurturing character of a
community gradually disappears. As observe by Bauman in Britain and America,
‘community’ … sounds increasingly hollow because inter-human bonds that require a
‘large and continuous investment of time and effort’, and are worth the sacrifice of
immediate individual interest, are increasingly frail and temporary.

Thus Colic-Peisker (2010) emphasized that the shifting and ‘liquid’ life in the
global city leaves little firm ground for anyone to lodge an anchor. Hypermobility of
competitive cosmopolitans does not allow much room for community life (Colic-
Peisker, 2010). Dwellers of the global city, regardless of the population density, are likely
to be spatially and emotionally detached from their neighbours and co-locals, and
devoted to their professional pursuits, that usually require them to be highly connected

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and ‘networked’ in an instrumental way, these days increasingly through the Internet.
Bauman diagnosed a ‘disintegration of locally grounded, shared community
living’ (Bauman, 2005: 78) and argued that community has been largely replaced by
‘network: a matrix of random connections and disconnecions’.

REFERENCES:

Sassen, Saskia.( 2005). “The Global City: Introducing a Concept.” Brown Journal of
World Affairs XI(2): 27-43.

Colic-Peisker. (2016). (2016) The SAGE Handbook of Globalization: “Mobility, Diversity

and Community in the Global City”.

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LEARNING ACTIVITY

Activity:

Individual sharing of first city experience

• Make a creative presentation about your “first city/cosmopolitan experience”

• You can narrate your story using powerpoint, video presentation or reenactment.

ASSESSMENT

QUIZ

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