Department of Social Sciences

CENTRAL MINDANAO UNIVERSITY

GEC 13
THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD
A.Y. 2020-2021
ANALOU C. AMOR
INSTRUCTOR

This material has made available to you for your personal use only in this course. Please
ask permission from your instructor/professor for any other use or distribution.

Citation: Abinales, P. & Claudio, L. (2018). The Contemporary World. C & E Publishing, Inc.

Term Offered: 2nd Semester SY 2020-2021

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 LESSON 8:
THE GLOBAL CITY
_________________
At the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

1. Explain why globalization is a spatial phenomenon

2. Identify the attributes of a global city; and
3. Analyse how cities serve as engines of globalization

_________________
WHY STUDY GLOBAL CITIES?

- Because globalization is SPATIAL.

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 1. It occurs in physical places

- foreign investments, capital

move through a city,
skyscrapers, purchase of
condominium units by Filipinos
working abroad

- more poor people are driven

out of city centers to make way
for new developments

Tokyo –
Headquarters of
Sony, where the
company coordinates
the sales of its
2. It is spatial because what makes it various electronics
move is the fact that is based in goods to branches
places across the world.
- Cities act on globalization and
globalization acts on cities.

- Cities are sights as well as mediums

of globalization

Los Angeles –
Home of the
Hollywood,
where films are
made for global
consumption

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 - In the years to come, more and
more people will experience
globalization through cities.

- 1950 – 30% of the world lives in

urban areas

- 2014 – it increased to 54%

- 2050 – expected to reach 60%

This lesson studies globalization through the living environment of a rapidly

increasing number of people.

DEFINING THE GLOBAL CITY

SASKIA SASSEN

- Popularized the term “global city”

- Criteria: primarily ECONOMIC
- Identifies three global cities : New York, London and
Tokyo as hubs of global finance and capitalism and home of
world’s top stock exchanges where investors buy and sell
shares in major corporations

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New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Financial Times Stock Exchange Nikkei

Recent commentators expanded the criteria that Sassen used to determine what
constitutes a global city due to latest developments.

Example: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou

LOS ANGELES

Not wealthy as Big Apple (New

York’s nickname) but can now rival
in movie-making

SAN FRANCISCO

Home of the most powerful

internet companies (Facebook,
Twitter, and Google)

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 Growth of Chinese Economy – turned cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou into centers of trade
and finance

SHANGHAI BEIJING

Chinese gov’t reopened the Shanghai Stock

Exchange in late 1990 and it has grown to
become the 5th largest stock market in the
world.

GUANGZHOU

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 Others consider some cities “global” simply because they are great place to live in.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Commands the greatest proportion

of capital in Australia

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Sydney’s rival “global city

Many magazines referred to as the

most “livable city”- a place with
good transportation, thriving
cultural scene, easy pace of life.

INDICIATORS FOR GLOBALITY

1. ECONOMIC POWER
New York – greatest stock market in the world

Tokyo – houses the most number of corporate headquarters (613 of Tokyo against 217 of N.Y.,
its closest competitor)

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 Shanghai – smaller stock market compared to N.Y. and Tokyo plays a critical role in global
economic supply chain ever since China has become the manufacturing center of the
world.

- Busiest container port in the world (moving over 33 million container units in 2013)

Economic opportunities in a global city make it attractive to talents from across the world.

San Francisco Bay Area

IT programmers and engineers from Asia

moved to this place (since 1970s) to become
significant figure in Silicon Valley’s technology
boom

LONDON

Preferred destination of
Filipino Nurses

Economist Intelligence Unit added another criteria like market size, purchasing power of citizens,
size of the middle class and potential for growth to measure the competitiveness of a city.

. SINGAPORE

Considered as Asias’s most competitive city because of its strong

market, efficient and incorruptible government and livability.
It also houses the regional offices of many major global
corporations.

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2. CENTERS OF AUTHORITY
Washington D.C- not as wealthy as New York, seat of American state power.

Major Landmarks of Washington: White House, Capitol Building (Congress), Supreme Court, Lincoln
Memorial, Washington Monument

Capitol Building (Congress)

White House Supreme Court

Lincoln Memorial Washington Monument

CANBERRA

Not wealthy as Sydney and Melbourne, a sleepy

town and not attractive to tourists but Australia’s
political capital, home to the country’s top
politicians, bureaucrats and policy advisors

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3. CENTERS OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE
Headquarters of:

UN – New York European Union – Brussels, Belgium

ASEAN – Jakarta, Indonesia European Central Bank – Frankfurt, Germany

(which oversees Euro, the European Union currency)

- A decision made in that city can, therefore affect the

political economy of an entire continent and beyond.

4. CENTERS OF HIGHER LEARNING AND CULTURE

– City’s intellectual influence can be seen in its publishing industry

- Most articles people read are published in places like New York, London, and Paris (ex. New York Times)

Far from being a local newspaper. People read it

not just across America, but also all over the
world.

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 BOSTON

Home of Harvard University

AUSTRALIA

English – language universities there is what Asian

teenagers’ reason in moving in cities

- Education is 3rd largest export of Australia– it

made $19.2 billion dollars ($14 Billion USD) in education

COPENHAGEN

So small, an be toured with a bicycle in 30minutes,

capital of Denmark

Culinary capitals of the world with its top restaurants

Birthplace of “New Cordic” cuisine

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND

Home of post- punk and New Wave bands

– Joy Division, Smiths, and Happy
Mondays, making it global household
name.

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 SINGAPORE

Houses the region’s top television stations and news

organization (MTV Southeast Asia and Channel News Asia)

Have various art galleries and cinemas, respectively, from the

Philippines and Thailand

Sometimes, it is easier to watch the movie of a Filipino indie

filmmaker in Singapore than it is Manila

It is a cultural power of global cities that ties them to the imagination. It can be manifested into songs.

SONGS ABOUT NEW YORK

1. Empire State of Mind – Jay Z and Alicia Keys

2. New York, New York – Frank Sinatra

Global cities become culturally diverse.

Berlin and Tokyo –offer some of the best Turkish food

because of their large Turkish population

Singapore - has foreign population of 38%

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 THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL CITY

GLOBAL CITY
- Can be sites of great inequality, poverty, and tremendous violence
- Creates winners and losers

PATHOLOGIES OF THE GLOBAL CITY

(Based on the research of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs)

1. Cities can be sustainable because of their density

- Richard Florida – “Ecologists have found that by concentrating populations in smaller areas, cities
and metros decrease human encroachment on natural habitats.”

- Ex. Denser settlement patters yields to energy savings; apartment buildings.

- Cities with extensive public transportation systems, people tend to drive less thereby cut carbon
emission

New York – because of city’s extensive train system, it has lowest per capita carbon footprint
emission in U.S.

Singapore & Tokyo (dense global cities) – have low per capita carbon footprints

Los Angeles – are urban sprawls, with massive freeways that force residents to spend money on cars
and gas

Manila, Bangkok, and Mumbai – dense, lack of efficient transportation and government’s inability
to regulate their car industries have made them extremely polluted.

- Urban areas consume most of the world’s energy because of the sheer size of the population
- Cities consume only 2% of world’s land mass, but consumes 78% of global energy
- Shipping of food through train, buses and even planes increases carbon emissions.
- Vertical Farms technique that used abandoned building for farms in N.Y. can be a solution as
it may lead the way towards more environmentally sustainable cities.
- If more food can be grown with less water in dense spaces, cities will begin to be greener.

2. Cities especially those with global influence are obvious targets of terrorists due to their high
population and their roles as symbols of globalization that many terrorist despise.

Ex. 9/11 attack of Twin Towers of World Trade Center in New York

- November 2015 coordinated attacks in Paris by zealots of the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL)

- Trump towers may be subject to terrorism it is in Istanbul and Manila as the owner, Donald
Trump as the former president of US.

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 THE GLOBAL CITY AND THE POOR
Economic globalization has paved the way for massive inequality.

- Scandinavia – found ways to mitigate inequality through state – led social redistribution
programs.
- Manila, Mumbai and Jakarta – It is common to find gleaming buildings alongside massive
shantytowns
- Outskirts N.Y. and San Francisco – poor enclaves occupied by African –Americans and
immigrant families often denied opportunities at a better life.

As city attracts more capital and richer residents, real estate prices go up and poor residents are
forced to relocate to far away but cheaper areas. This phenomenon is called gentrification.

Gentrification – driving out the poor in favor of newer wealthier residents

AUSTRALIA

Poor aboriginal Australians have been most

acutely affected by gentrification.

Once living in public urban housing, they

were forced to move farther away from
the city centers that offer more jobs, more
government services and better
transportation.

FRANCE

Poor Muslim migrant are

forced out of Paris and have
clustered around ethnic
enclaves known as banlieue

Middle class is thinning out, for high income earners hire unskilled labor force (hotel cleaners,
nannies, maids, and waitresses). Meanwhile, middle – income jobs in manufacturing and business
(call centers) are moving to other countries.

It heightened the inequality between them.

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

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 CONCLUSION

GLOBAL CITIES

▪ Sites and mediums of globalization

▪ Material representation of the phenomenon
▪ Through them, we see the best of globalization; they are places that generate tremendous
wealth

HOWEVER,

▪ They remain sites of great inequality, where global servants serve global entrepreneurs.
▪ The question of how globalization can be made more just is partly a question of how people
make their cities more just.

Photos: From Google

“You will face many defeats in your life,

but never let yourself be defeated.”

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