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Cities

Cities. INR 456 Political Geography. How to define city?. 1 ) A place where the main economic activity is trade rather than agriculture. Where the products of agriculture are sold. (Classical ages) 2) A political centre of political organization from where society is ruled. (Classical Age)

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Cities

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  1. Cities INR 456 Political Geography

  2. How to define city? • 1) A place where the main economic activity is trade rather than agriculture. Where the products of agriculture are sold. (Classical ages) • 2) A political centre of political organization from where society is ruled. (Classical Age) • 3) A fortress which is surrounded by walls and provides shelter and food during times of war (Middle Ages) • 4) A legal institution or a community which has its own rights and legal status. (Late Middle Ages)

  3. What was the world like in the early Middle Ages? • Political disorder • Limited trade and closed economy • Emergence of new political actors

  4. What is feudalism? • Feudalism is a way of structuring social and political relations in society based on land ownership in return for services.

  5. General Characteristics of Feudalism • 1) Landownership gives a privileged status. • 2) Land is divided among nobles and clergy. • 3) Land is the main source of wealth. Being rich/wealthy means possessing land • 4) The economic life is limited and self-sufficiency is the main principal. (not profit) • 6) Taxes collected by vassals or monarchs are the personal wealth of vassals or monarchs. There is no redistribution of taxes in society. • 7) Political system is decentralized and monarchs have little or symbolic authority over its vassals and clergy. • 8) Social life is patriarchical.

  6. How do towns and cities look like in the early middle ages between 4 and 9 centuries? • 1) Most of the towns are the places where bishops reside. In order to be considered as a town, there has to be cathedral where bishop (piskopos) lives. • 2) Towns are formed around cathedrals • 3) Population is not more than thousands. • 4) Bishops are governing the town and they were not only governors but also judges in town. • 5) Nobles live in their castles in the countryside. This s true for North Europe but for Italy nobles also live in towns.

  7. What happened in the Late Middle Ages that transformed feudal society and towns? • 1) Invasions from North and South stopped which created a peaceful environment for Europe. • 2) Population increased rapidly. • 3) the clearing and cultivation of new land • 4) technological innovations like the heavy plow (pulluk) and the horse collar and the use of windmills • 5) Maritime trade was restarted after the retreat of Muslims in the Mediterranean Sea. • 6) Venetians became the dominant seapower who controlled the trade in the Mediterranean by transporting goods from Eastern Mediterranean (Konstantinapolis, Aleppo, Cairo, Alexandria) to Italy and Southern France.

  8. Heavy Plough

  9. Consequences of the development of overseas trade • a. It created new coastal cities in France such as Marseille, Barcelona in Spain, Ghent and Bruges in Belgium. Inner towns and cities which are connected to coastal cities via rivers also flourished from maritime trade. • b. Maritime trade created a new social class whose wealth is accumulated through trade. (Merchants)

  10. These new merchant class reside in cities. They are the new class, the bourgeoisie which means city-nobles or people living in burgens. • Alongside trading in these new cities textile industry and craftsmanship also flourished. • This new class not only affected economic life but also changed the socio-political relations in feudal societies. They became third class alongside nobles and clergy. • This new class demanded rights and to be governed by different rules

  11. Map of Crusades

  12. Consequences of the rise of bourgeoisie • 1) Urban life and rural life are separated from each other and urban life is associated with modernity and civilization. • 2) Cities turn into new centres of economic and political power. • 3) Monarchs gained the political and economic support of bourgeoisie to centralize the political system and impose their absolute control over their country as well as over its vassals and clergy. Emergence of centralized monarchies based on their own armies and bureaucrats because these new monarchs found a new way to raise funds. Taxing merchants or borrowing from merchants. • 4) This new class was the pioneers of Renaissance and Reformation. They established their own secular scholars challenging the authority and monopoly of clergy in education system.

  13. Industrialized cities • a) Cities become centres of mass production due to the factories build in and around cities. (Powerhouses of industrialized societies and political centers of nation-states and empires) • b) The emergence of the modern city in the early 1800s was shaped by industry, innovations in transportation (railroads in particular), and mass migrations of people. • c) Mass migration from countryside to cities provided the most needed cheap workforce for factories but on the other hand it also resulted in highly populated and dense cities. • d) Rapid growth brought urban problems, and industrial-era cities were rife with dangers to health and safety. • e) Poor sanitation and communicable diseases were among the greatest causes of death among urban working class populations.

  14. Cities in the 20th century • With the improvements in sanitation and sewage system in cities and the establishment of new residential areas modern cities in the 20th century turned into places which provides standards of good life for its citizens. • Highly-industrialized city-centers led to the emergence of suburban areas where people live but commute to city-centers everyday for work. Development of road and railways and increase in the ownership of cars led to suburbanization.

  15. Post-industrialized cities • With the advancements in telecommunication technology in the 1970s a new form of urbanization and a new kind of city has emerged. • The riots in the late-1960s and 1970s contributed to de-industrialization of city centers and gentrification of the inner city.

  16. De-industrialization means manufacturing sector (industry) is taken out of city centers and replaced by service-sector such as banking, law firms, insurance companies, design companies, architectural firms, advertising companies. • Gentrification: Jantilestirme, seckinlestirme. • the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces earlier usually poorer residents. Gentrification created wealthy communities living in high-priced residents. One of the result of gentrification is the increase in the price of houses in the city centers. • Vertical growth: Increase in the number of skyscrapers and Emergence of Business-districts, headquarters and office buildings replacing residential houses.

  17. Global Cities • 1) Global cities are newly emerged post-industrialized cities. • 2) They are the centres of corporate decision-making and also physical sites for the networked technological infrastructure of the global economy. • 3) The growth in network connection between global cities • 4)Global cities have similar telecommunication technologies such as 3g-4g internet connection, public wi-fi. • 5) Global cities are the most integrated cities to global economy, they are the engines of globalisation too such as London, New York and Tokyo. • 6) As a result of globalisation manufacturing relocated to cities where there is low cost of labour while global cities turn into centers of skilled labour and technology-intense creative and innovative sectors)

  18. Global Cities

  19. Impacts of Global Cities • 1) Global cities as emerging international actors can exert power around the globe through their connections with other global cities. • 2) Global cities create new geographies of dependencies which is different from state to state dependency. • 3) Global cities are the cultural and institutional centers of neo-liberalism and market deregulation and financial centers of globalized economy. • 4) Global cities not only dominate the economic life in a nation but also dominates trans-regional and world economy. Global cities lead to the creation of global city regions. • 5) Global cities develop new types of interdependencies within a country as well as among other countries. (A new kind of core-periphery relations) • 6) Like what happened in the Middle Ages, the rise of global cities raises questions about nation-states, and their authority over territory of global cities, economic and social life in global cities.

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