Global Cities Flashcards
What are some examples of historical global cities?
- Timbuktu (Mali): a centre of Islamic cultue, located along the trans-Saharan caravan trade route
-Tenochtitlan(Mexico City)
-Samarkand (Uzbekistan): along route between China, Persia, and Europe
-Alexandria (Egypt)
-Venice
-Cahokia(A planned city near st. Louis at meeting of Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers)
Melaka(Malaysia): one of the most important ports in 14-15th centuries
How do we see Arab culture in Spanish colonies?
One example is mashrabiya balconies
- originated in the 12th century in Egypt and spread across Islamic lands, brought to the Americas with the colonial Spanish. The best examples are seen in Peru `
How do we define a global city? When did this term emerge?
Many ways!
Scholarship in geography and urban studies emerged in 1980s around the turn ‘world cities’, ‘global cities; adopted in 1990s.
Defined as command and control centres for the global economy: sites for transnational corporations to manage global operations efficently (primarilyan economic definition)
What are some examples of current Global cities?
London, New York, Tokyo, Dubai, etc.
What are some characteristics of Global cities according to Friedmann and Wolf?
- Integrated into the Global economy in particular ways witha clear urban hierarchy of influence and control
- Clusters of transnational elite professionals (high-level business services, makes decisions about global investment)
- Marked by distinct divisions and inequalities (declining manufacturing jobs, Increase in informal and illegal employment, reliant on conflict within city)
-Often divided and tense
How was illegal employment prevalent in the World trade centre tragedy?
Scores of both legal and undocumented immigrants were among the victims of the 9/11 attack (over 400 undocumented immigrants)
- They worked on all floors of the towers as deliverymen, busboys, janitors, and construction workers
Who is Sakisa Sassen? What are her ideas?
Saskia Sassen most influential person who elaborated on Friedmann and Wolf’s ideas.
She thinks that Global cities (like London, Tokyo, and New YorkI are the apex of the heirarchy because of:
1) their financial markets
2) the companies located in them provide advanced producer services to transnational corporations
What are Advanced producer services (APS)?
Refers to the ecosystem of services needed by transnational corporations to operate efficiently, like insurance, financial, banking, real estate, legal, accounting, business consulting, advertising, etc.
What else is Saskia Sassen interested in?
Which cities have major clusters of APS activities and how these capacities are generated
She argues that APS firms are more crucial but less visible than corporate headquarters.
What mainstream assumptions does Sassen challenge regarding globalization?
assumptions:
1) Globalization provides the freedom for economic activity to happen almost anywhere in a free-flowing , hypermobile word
2) Thsi new freedom and global reach benefits everyone in society all over the world
arguments:
1) this is a myth. These cities with APS benefit from clustering for face-to-face contact and informal interactions
2) this is also a myth, global capitalism thrives on uneven development
What are 3 ways to expand on Sassen’s work?
1) Global cities might be better understood as global city-regions (ex. LA’s globalness built on integrated system of offices across Southern California)
2) Growing efforts to identify globalness of other cities as diverse as Delhi, Mexico City, Mumbai, Accra, etc. (Nairobi in Kenya is global given the concentration of UN and NGO agencies. )
3) Using the term ‘globalizing cities’ rather than ‘global cities’ (stresses that globalization is a process)
What are the critiques of the dominant Global cities approach?
Some critical urban geographers question the validity of the categories and criteria used to create the notion of the global city in the first place
Worry about the conceptual and political consequences of placing this definition of globalness at the heart of our discussions of cities in the world
What does Jennifer Robinson critique about the global cities approach? (plus a bonus)
3 main critiques:
1) Global cities scholarship suffers from an underlying developmentalism: a specific Western notion of development is promoted/accepted as the path to improve people’s lives in poor countries. These theories assume they can be universalized when they shouldn’t.
2) The epistemology and methodology is flawed and rely on problematic catergories: globalness is defined by economic command and control with hierarchy as the defining feature of a global urban system. This is skewed toward western firms. Global cities is too simple and universal.
3) the potential policy implications of the Global cities approach are concerning: The global cities approach has become a “regulating fiction” of how the world works and the definition of success. If a ‘poor’ city puts its limited resourcesinto becoming a global city, these resources are being taken from other services which could help more.
Bonus: Robinson thinks the ‘citadel and ghetto’ idea of global cities is to polarizing, she suggest “ordinary cities”
What is an example of a country striving to be world class but it being harmful to the lower class?
Banning informal sector (food vendors etc) when this is their livelihood
Banning types of transportation used by the poor like Autorickshaws
