Lecture 3 World Cities

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/i-lego-ny/

Besotted by New York

Baghdad on the Hudson, Christmas Eve, 1978

Lower Manhattan, December, 1978

Outline
The international context of world city
formation (Beaverstock et al. reading on
world-city networks)
Internal make-up of world cities
Case study: New York (Neil Smith reading
on gentrification on NYCs Lower
Eastside).

International context
World cities are bound up with:
Growing corporatization
Internationalization of production
Stephen Hymer world city prophet
The multinational corporation and the law of
uneven development (1971)

Growing Corporatization
Division between production function
(brute labour/raw materials) and control
function (intellectual capital/knowledge)
Over 20th century firms have become larger,
and control function more important
Information-rich cities (the larger the city,
the more information) increasingly pivotal
for location of corporate control functions.

Production
Factory
Blue Collar

Control
Office
White Collar

Sites rich in
labour/raw
materials

Sites rich in
information/
knowledge

Internationalisation of production
Last 30 years, rapid and pervasive corporate
foreign direct investment (FDI):
Multinational Corporations (MNC) and
Transnational Corporations (TNC)
Driven by:
Cheap labour
Changes in production technology
Improvements in
communication/transportation technology

Head Office

World City, eg.,

New York

Regional
Offices

Factories

National city,
e.g., Sydney
Anywhere in
the world, eg,
Penang Island,
Malaysia

Power/ control
in the urban
hierarchy

Peter Taylor on world cities

Peter Taylor (Loughborough) world city is
defined by ability to provide global information to
corporate clients.
Measured by number of worlds largest producer
service firms found in a city in accounting,
advertising, law, and banking. Three groups of
world cities (apha, beta, gamma), and a group of
wannabes (including Vancouver).

A. ALPHA WORLD CITIES

12: London, Paris, New York, Tokyo
10: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore
B. BETA WORLD CITIES
9: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zurich
8: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, Sao Paulo
7: Moscow, Seoul
C. GAMMA WORLD CITIES
6: Amsterdam, Boston, Caracas, Dallas, Dusseldorf, Geneva,
Houston, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Osaka, Prague, Santiago,
Taipei, Washington
5: Bangkok, Beijing, Montreal, Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw
4: Atlanta, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Copenhagen,
Hamburg, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Miami, Minneapolis,
Munich, Shanghai

Di Relatively strong evidence

3: Athens, Auckland, Dublin, Helsinki, Luxembourg, Lyon, Mumbai,
New Delhi, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Vienna
Dii Some evidence
2: Abu Dhabi, Almaty, Birmingham, Bogota, Bratislava, Brisbane,
Bucharest, Cairo, Cleveland, Cologne, Detroit, Dubai, Ho Chi Minh
City, Kiev, Lima, Lisbon, Manchester, Montevideo, Oslo, Rotterdam,
Riyadh, Seattle, Stuttgart, The Hague, Vancouver
Diii Minimal evidence
1: Adelaide, Antwerp, Arhus, Baltimore, Bangalore, Bologna, Brazilia,
Calgary, Cape Town, Colombo, Columbus, Dresden, Edinburgh,
Genoa, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Kansas City, Leeds,
Lille, Marseille, Richmond, St Petersburg, Tashkent, Tehran, Tijuana,
Turin, Utrecht, Wellington

Inside the world city

Life at the top: tv, movies, and books
Tom Wolfe: from hippies (Electric Kool Aid
Acid Test Ken Keesey and The merry
pranksters) to yuppies (Bonfire of the
Vanities Sherman McCoy, Master of the
Universe.)

Transactional City
Neo-Alexandrine

Inside the world city

Corporate
Managers

Higher- and
Citadel
lower-end
service
workers
consumer
and domestic

Producer
Services
Clerical
Workers

Influx of
Immigrant
labour

Downgraded
Manufacturing
(Sweat shops)
Informal
Economy
(legal &

Back
offices

Exodus of
industry to
low-wage
areas

The primary social fact about world

city formation is the polarization of
its social class divisions John
Friedman.

Case study: New York

The Worlds capital.
New York region,
18.3m population (3rd
largest in the world).
$1.28 trillion metro
GDP (2010; #1 in US)
3.7 million employed in
NYC; 55% Manhattan

Wall Street and then the world

Decision-making citadel
Manhatten > 90% services; 55% in
quaternary sector
Largest conglomeration of business services
in world
Command and control centre for
US/international business
Role as financial centre strengthened since
1970

Decision-making citadel
NY terminus of
transatlantic fibre optic
cable trunkline: 430 Gbit/s
Telecommunications
centre teleport complex
on Staten Island
Vast concentration of
office space especially in
lower Manhattan (200 m
sq ft)

Lower Manhattan

High salaries and bonuses produce gentrification: Neil

Smiths study of Tomkins Square Park, East Village
(Revanchist city); Sharon Zukins study of Loft Living in
SoHo (South of Houston)

Brownstoning gentrification
SoHo warehouse conversion

And how the other half lives

Deindustrialisation
Poor wages (McJobs)
Sweat shops
(bringing the 3rd
world home)
Underground economy
Homelessness
Homeless man, NYC

All that glitters is not gold