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A world of cities. The ‘urban age’: > 50% of the world population now lives in (booming) cities
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A world of cities The ‘urban age’: > 50% of the world population now lives in (booming) cities No straightforward transition process: contemporary urbanization must be conceptualized as a structural transformation along, and intensified interaction between, every point of an urban-rural continuum Some staggering figures: - 1950-today: 86 → > 400 cities > 1 million inhabitants - from 2020 onwards: population growth = urban growth Today’s changes are quantitatively and qualitatively different from earlier phases Quantitatively: much stronger growth figures E.g., London (1800-1910: x7) versus Lagos (1950-today: x40) Qualitatively: decoupling ‘development’ and urbanization, new forms of urban centrality E.g., 95% of urban growth in the ‘Global South’, New York was considered to be ‘history’ in the 70s There are differential patterns, cf. China ↔ India ↔ Latin America and Africa
Re-thinking cities in globalization (1) New York (and other cities in the 70s): decline as the only option because of the supposed ‘end of geography’ < ICT/services-nexus However, the opposite has happened: a renewed centrality for cities < ICT/services-nexus Why is this the case? 1) Importance of proximity in advanced services 2) Globalization 1: central marketplace for services (“you have to be there”) 3) Globalization 2: office network covering all major cities to service client World cities/Global cities according to Saskia Sassen: sites for the production of advanced services for a global marketplace
Global cities as sites for the production of ‘producer services’
Re-thinking cities in globalization (2) Result: the world’s most connected cities in contemporary globalization are getting closer London-Frankfurt “A virtual office in two centres ... all those 100% are working together as one team, they’re a European team with one head, there are no two heads any more ... This comparison Frankfurt and London - what does it mean? … I think increasingly we get to the point where we say it doesn’t matter.” (German bank, London, 2001) New York-London “It’s amazing how this traffic increases. In that sense those two cities are moving closer together.” (US advertising, London, 2001) World cities = Sites of interconnecting flows in a multi-scale ‘world city network’ World cities = A global-local space of interaction World city network = aggregation of inter-city flows within contemporary globalization
Times Square New York
The Globalization and World Cities research group (GaWC) GaWC: research group that has been founded to devise a method for measuring relations between cities Starting points: ‘Globalization’: key cities cannot be purely understood in a ‘national’ framework ‘Inter-city-relations’: key cities derive their functional importance from connections with/to other cities → Focus on office networks of ‘producer services’ such as Deloitte = services that cover financial, legal, and general management matters, innovation,... →Starting point: global inter-city relations < shared presence of service firms
Measurement of the WCN Measurement of the WCN < a matrix of firms with information on their offices across world cities, whereby each cell describes the standardized importance of a city to a firm’s global service provision Choice of sectors (6): accountancy, advertising, banking/finance, insurance, law, management consultancy Choice of global service firms (100): a leading firm in the sector having offices in 15 or more different cities Choice of cities (315): capital cities of all but the smallest states plus many other important cities in larger states Standardized measurement of importance of a firm in a city (e.g. number of practitioners in a law firm) and their extra-locational functions (e.g. regional headquarters) < website APS firm 315 x 100 matrix summarizing global connectivity
WCN 2000-2008: major changes • Decline of US cities (e.g. All cities but NY decline) • Rise of Chinese cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou) • Concomitant rise of cities well-connected to Chinese cities (e.g. Sydney and Seoul)
