The Global City

Why Study Global Cities?

Defining the Global City
Indicators for Globality
The Challenges of Global Cities
The Global City and the Poor
 Creative
Talent
Knowledge
Opportunity
Technological
Innovation
Diverse social network

Population
Establishment
Cultural Hub
Ideas
FUTURE

Business
Olympic destination
 Why Study Global Cities?

• The Global City emphasizes that globalization is SPATIAL.

occupying, or having the
character of space
globalization is SPATIAL

• First, it occurs in physical

spaces.

You can see it when foreign

investment and capital moves
through a city, and when
companies build skyscrapers.
In this event, more poor
people are driven out of the city
centers to make way for the new
developments.
 • Second, what makes it move
is the fact that it is based in
places.
Cities act on globalization
and globalization act on cities.
They are the sites as well as
the medium of globalization.
Just as the internet shapes
(Sony) is in Tokyo, the company coordinates the sales of its global forces, so too do cities.
various electronic goods to branches across the world.
In the year to come, more and more people will experience globalization through cities.

In 1970, from

33 Philippine urban
population

% In 2019

.
47.1
Growing average
annual rate of

%
74
 This lesson studies globalization through the living
environment of a rapidly increasing number of people.
Defining the
Global City
Defining the Global
City
• Sociologist Saskia Sassen
popularized the term “Global City” in
the 1990s. Her criteria for what
constitutes a global were primarily
economic.
• Sociologist Saskia Sassen, initially
identified three Global Cities; New
York, London, and Tokyo, all of these
are hubs of global finance and
capitalism.
 New York has the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), London has the
Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE), and Tokyo has the Nikkei. The amount
of money trade in this market is staggering.

The New York Stock Exchange represents the highest concentration of capital
in the world.
The global economy has change significantly since Sassen wrote her book, and any account of
the economic power cities today.

Latest Development

Los Angeles can now rival the Big Apples cultural influence.

San Francisco is now the home of the

most powerful internet companies.

The growth of Chinese economy has turned cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou
into center trade of finance. Chinese government reopened the Shanghai Stock Exchange in
1990. Since then it has grown to become the 5th largest stock market in the world.
Other consider some cities “global” simply
because they are great places to live in.

In Australia, Sydney becomes commands the greatest proportion of capital. However,

Melbourne is described as Sydney's rival “global city” because many magazines and lists have
now referred to it as the world’s “most livable city”.

Most Livable City – A place with good public transportation, a thriving cultural sense, and
a relatively easy pace of life.
The Most Violent Cities in the World:

1. Los Cabos, Mexico

2. Caracas, Venezuela
3. Acapulco, Mexico
4. Natal, Brazil
5. Tijuana, Mexico
6. La Paz, Mexico
7. Fortaleza, Brazil
8. Ciudad Victoria, Mexico
9. Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela
10. Belem, Brazil
Indicators of
Globality
1. derive the global
economy
2. drive
connectivity
3. top educational
institutions
4. cultural capital
5. lead by people
who think
globally
6. OPEN:
businesses,
ideas, and
people
Indicators of Globality

1. The foremost characteristic of global city is economic power.

 Sociologist Saskia Sassen remains correct in saying that
economic power largely determines which cities are global.

The manufacturing, mining, energy, and agricultural

industries are China's largest industries. Manufacturing is by
China far the biggest industry in China accounting for 46.8% of the
manufacturing country’s GDP.
center of the world
 Economic opportunities in a global city make it
attractive to talents from across the world.

Since 1970, top IT programmers and engineers

from Asia have moved to San Francisco Bay Filipinos with nursing degrees
Area to become the key figures in technology preferred London
boom.
The Economist Intelligence Unit
measure the economic competitiveness
of a city:
Market size
Purchasing power of the citizens
Size of middle class
Potential for growth
2. Global cities are also centers of authority.
Washington D.C. may not be as wealthy as New York, but it is the seat of American
state power. Its major landmarks:

The White House The Capitol Building (Congress) The Supreme Court

The Lincoln Memorial The Washington Monument

The cities are considered centers of political influence that house
major international organizations. The headquarters of:
 United Nations is in New York
 European Union is in Brussels
 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is in Jakarta
Powerful political hubs exert influence on their own countries as well as on
international affairs. A decision made in that city can, therefore, affect the
political economy of an entire continent and beyond.
3. Global cities are centers of higher learning and culture. A city’s intellectual
influence is seen through the influence of its publishing industry.

The New York Times carries the name of University of Oxford

New York City. People read it not just across The world’s top university. One of the
America, but also all over the world. reasons many tourists visits England.

Education is currently Australia’s third largest export. Many Asian teenagers are
moving to cities in Australia because of the leading English-language universities.
Australian made roughly as much as 14 billion US dollars from education alone.
It is the cultural power of global cities that ties them to the imagination.

Singapore is slowly becoming a cultural hub. It now

houses some of the region’s top television stations and
new organizations. Its various art galleries and cinemas
also shows painting from artists and filmmakers,
respectively, from the Philippines and Thailand.

Los Angeles, the center of the American film industry, he

home of Hollywood, is where movies are made for global
consumption and is considered a global city.

Copenhagen- It is so small that one can tour the entire city

with bicycle in thirty minutes. It is now considered one of the
culinary capital of the world. As the birthplace of “New Nordic”
cuisine, Copenhagen has set into motion various culinary
trends like foraging the forest for local ingredients.
 Today, global cities become culturally diverse. In a global city, one can try cuisines from
different part of the world.

Manila is not very global because of the scares of foreign residents but Singapore is,
because it has a foreign population of 38%.
The Challenges
of Global Cities
Global cities set up an image of an exciting lifestyles, but such description is lacking. Global
cities have great inequality and poverty as well as tremendous violence. They create
winners and losers.

Cities can be sustainable because of their density.

As Richard Florida notes: “Ecologists have found that by
concentrating their populations in smaller areas, cities and metros
decrease human encroachment on natural habitat.”

In cities with extensive public transportation systems, people

tend to drive less and thereby cut carbon emissions.
 Not all cities are as dense as New York or Tokyo. Like Manila,
Bangkok, and Mumbai are dense, their lack of public transportation
and their governments’ inability to regulate their car industries
have made them extremely polluted.
Because of the sheer size of city populations across the world,
urban areas consume most of the world’s energy. Cities only
cover 2% of the world’s landmass, but they consume 78% of global
energy.
Cities with global influence, are obvious targets for terrorist due to their
high populations and their role as symbols of globalization that many
terrorists despise. The same attributes that make them attractive to workers
and migrants make them sites of potential terrorist violence.
The Global City
and the Poor
Economic globalization has paved the way for massive inequality, thus, very pronounced in
cities.

Many cities, particularly those in the

developing countries, are site of contradiction.
In places Mumbai, Jakarta, and Manila, it is
common to find gleaming building alongside
massive shantytowns.
Gentrification – a phenomenon of driving out the poor in favor of newer, wealthier
residents.

In the borders of New York and San Francisco are poor urban enclaves occupied by
African-Americans and immigrant families who are often denied opportunities at a better
life. Slowly, they are being forced to move farther away from economic centers of
their cities. As the city attracts more capital and richer residents, real estate prices go up
and poor residents are forced to relocate to far away but cheaper area.
 In most of the world’s global cities, the
middle class is also thinning out for
globalization creates high-income
jobs. These high earners, in turn, generate
demand for an unskilled labor force (hotel
cleaners, nannies, maids, waitresses, etc.)
that will attend to their increasing needs. In
places like New York, there are high-rolling
American investment bankers whose
children are raised by Filipina maids.

A large global city may thus be a paradise for some, but a

purgatory for others.
 Conclusion
Global cities are material representations of globalization.

Through global city, we see the best of globalization;

*They are places that create exciting fusions of culture and ideas.
*They are also places that generate tremendous wealth.

However, they remain sites of great inequality, where global

servants serve global entrepreneurs.
Thank you!