Urban Geography: Thinking about World Cities

Question 1

What is the Central Place Theory?

Answer 1

A central place system comprises a hierarchy of central places – ranging from a small number of very large central places (cities) offering higher-order goods (expensive and infrequently purchased items, such as designer furniture and jewelry) to a large number of small central places offering low-order goods (inexpensive, frequently purchased, everyday necessities, such as newspapers and milk).

Question 2

What is a central place?

Answer 2

a service center providing goods to a surrounding hinterland

Question 3

What is a hinterland?

Answer 3

A market area – the sphere of economic influence of an urban area. The urban area serves its hinterland with goods and services and its hinterland it turns supplies the urban area with products for processing or for export.”

“The spatial extent of the sphere of influence of a settlement; also referred to as the ‘catchment area’ or urban field”

Question 4

What is a threshold?

Answer 4

minimum purchasing power necessary to return a normal profit to an entrepreneur at a particular location

Inner range of a good – market area necessary to achieve threshold (i.e. spatial manifestation of threshold)

Outer range of the good – maximum spatial extent of market area

Question 5

Walter Christaller sought to explain the size and spacing of towns and cities in his central place theory. What were some of his assumptions?

Answer 5

(1) Isotropic Plain
(2) Population is evenly distributed
(3) That Central Places exist to provide goods, services and administrative functions to their hinterlands
(4) Consumer behavior – consumers use the closest central place opportunity
(5) Entrepreneurial behavior – suppliers aim to maximize profits
(6) Higher order centers supply provide functions that are not offered at the lower level, but, they also provide all the functions that are provided at the lower level
(7) All consumers have the same income and same demand for goods and services

Question 6

Why were circular hinterlands a logical assumption for tourists buy problematic?

Answer 6

They meant that some ares would be underserved or there would be an overlap of service provision.

Question 7

What is the assessment of the central place theory?

Answer 7

1) Does not take account of historical factors that can influence settlement pattern
2) Rational economic decisions are rarely made
3) The notion of a homogeneous population ignores individual circumstances
4) Christaller’s model assumed that there would be little government influence on business locational decisions
5) Mobility has increased, we don’t always go to our ‘nearest neighbor’ (also internet shopping)

Question 8

What is an advantage of the central place theory?

Answer 8

Nevertheless, a consideration of central place theory helps us to imagine locational advantage and the limits of theoretical modelling …. And it also helps us to envision how the world is spiky.

Question 9

What are world cities?

Answer 9

A term coined by Patrick Geddes in 1915 to describe those cities in which a disproportionate share of the world’s most important business - economic, political, and cultural - is conducted and that serve as headquarters to transnational corporations.

Question 10

What cities are typically identified as the leading tiers of world cities?

Answer 10

London, New York, and Tokyo. Although Paris, Frankfurt, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Zurich also have important global roles.

Question 11

What are 11 characteristics of world cities?

Answer 11

1. has international exposure
2. possess a diverse population
3. attracts factors of production (capital, labour) form outside the city and has firms and other economic institutions abroad.
4. acts as a center of transportation and distribution
5. it hosts foreign and international institutions and their representatives
6. it has a strong base of visitor services (i.e. convention centers, hotels, etc)
7. it boasts a mass media with a presence abroad
8. it plays host to major international events
9. it has public or private institutions that have agreements with an international scope/ reputation
10. It is home to a local government with the requisite administrative apparatus to conduct diplomacy effectively
11. the emphasis is on function and power, not on size (i.e. Calcutta and Zurich are mega cities but not world cities)

Question 12

What are alpha world cities (full service world cities )

Answer 12

london, new york, paris, tokyo, chicago, frankfurt, hong kong, los angeles, milan, singapore

Question 13

What are beta world cities (major world cities)

Answer 13

san francisco, sydney, toronot, zurich, brussels, madrid, mexico city, sao paulo, moscow, seoul

Question 14

What cities in the US are most connected?

Answer 14

New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, Washington DC, Minneapolis, Chicago

Question 15

“If the world is observed from the point of view of the connectivity of the world cities, a new image emerges. What image is this?”

Answer 15

“Where each city is virtually oriented to other cities of the same level of inter-connectivity. National or continental maps give way to a new world configuration intended as an archipelago, where each city appears utterly separated from its geographical surrounding and closer to other cities of same level.”

Question 16

Other than Istanbul (which is really on the periphery) the West Asian/North Africa region ________.

Answer 16

does not feature in the top 50 of world cities in terms of contemporary network connectivity. This is a remarkable demise for a region that historically has been at the center of global urban development.

Question 17

Dubai, Cairo and Beirut which are respectively the new Gulf Arab world city, the traditional Mediterranean Arab world city, and the historical urban linchpin of the region are all only _______ in terms of connectivity

Answer 17

‘medium’

Question 18

When you think about connectivity and convergence, whats equally as important?

Answer 18

Absence. Silences are as interesting as utterances.

Question 19

What are three points of academic consternation when it comes to understanding black holes in the world city hierarchy?

Answer 19

1. Lack of good quality, comparable, international urban data
2. Emphasis on the top end of the hierarchy (connectivity through command and control)
3. we need to identify places that lack connectivity

Question 20

What was the criteria for this?

Answer 20

1. had a population of over 3 million
2. they were not identified by the GAWC
   3 they do not share their national territory with a world city (e.g. St. Petersburg was removed because Moscow was already there)

Question 21

Why would a city not be labeled as a non-world city?

Answer 21

1. Poverty
2. Collapse
3. Risk aversion (excluded)
4. exclusion and resistance (resisting city)

Question 22

Explain why poverty would make a city not be labeled as a world city.

Answer 22

Some cities are simply too poor to represent a market for advanced producer services.

not enough affluent consumers

these 11 cities all have low or low-medium gross national income per capita

flows of remittances/ migration but not flows of advanced producer services

Question 23

Explain why collapse would make a city not be labeled as a world city.

Answer 23

places that are characterized by the decline of the rule of law/ social anarchy/war/social unrest tend to be bypassed by global capitalism

sustained social disruption reinforces the global disconnect

Question 24

Explain why risk aversion would make a city not be labeled as a world city.

Answer 24

avoidance by capital investors

high risk is cumulative

Question 25

Explain why exclusion and resistance would make a city not be labeled as a world city.

Answer 25

National ideologies - some areas do not encourage global economic connections to advanced capitalist economies

fear of secular beliefs

economic sanctions from outside.

Question 26

Compared to other regions, the MENA (Middle East, North Africa) has longer experience with the urban world, was more highly urbanized earlier, had a more central role for cities in the political, spiritual and security life of the people, than anywhere else on the planet. And yet…….”

Answer 26

the region now appears “peripheral”, “stuck”, “dystopic”, “too state centric”, “existing in a structural hole.”

Question 27

What is a shatterbelt?

Answer 27

“A shatterbelt is a region that is essentially stuck between two opposing cultural and political forces. Stress/Instability is always a factor in areas like this. They tend to be areas with a lot of conflict and aggression.” .

Question 28

How does the Middle East relate to shatterbelts?

Answer 28

“The Middle East lies on the world’s largest “shatterbelt”… the region of contact between the world’s great sea and land powers… shatterbelts are not just flashpoints for great power conflict. Critically, and unlike in other areas, small states located inside them can significantly affect the course of conflict simply by changing sides, shifting the balance of power across a tipping point. “-Roxane Farmanfarmaian inRedrawing the Middle East Map

Question 29

What did Lietenant Colonel Ralph Peters say about Africa and the Middle East?

Answer 29

“The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.

While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — 
The greatest taboo in 
striving to understand the 
region’s comprehensive 
failure isn’t Islam, but the 
awful-but-sacrosanct 
international boundaries 
worshipped by our own 
diplomats” (Lieutenant-
Colonel Ralph Peters)