The Global City

• Globalization is spatial because it occurs in physical spaces.

• Globalization is spatial because what it makes move is the fact
that is based in places.
• Global City was popularized by sociologist Saski Sasses in the
1990s and her criteria for what constitutes a global city were
primarily economic.
• The three global cities are New York, London & Tokyo.
• Any account of economic power of cities today must take note
of the latest developments.
• Other people consider some cities global because they are
great places to live in.
 Indicators for Globality
• Economic power largely determines which cities are global.
Economic opportunities in a global city make it attractive to
talents from across the world. To measure the economic
competitiveness of a city, The Economist Intelligence Unit has
added other criteria like market size, purchasing power of
citizens, size of the middle class, and potential for growth.
• Global cities are also centers of authority : The cities that
house major international organizations may also be considered
centers of political influence.
• Global cities are centers of higher learning and culture. It is the
cultural power of global cities that ties them to the imagination.
Global cities become culturally diverse.
 Challenges of Global Cities
• Global cities conjure up images of fast-paced, exciting,
cosmopolitan lifestyles. Such descriptions are lacking.
• Global cities can be sites of great inequality and poverty as well
as tremendous violence.
• Global cities create winners and losers.
• Cities can be sustainable because of their density.
• According to Richard Florida, ecologists have found that by
concentrating their populations in smaller areas, cities and
metros decrease human encroachment on natural habitats.
• Denser settlement patterns yield energy savings.
• Because of the sheer size of city populations across the world,
urban areas consume most of the world’s energy.
• If more food can be grown with less water in denser spaces,
cities will begin to greener.
• Cities, especially those with global influence are obvious targets
for terrorists due to their high populations and their role as
symbols of globalizations that many terrorists despise.
 The Global City and the Poor
• Economic globalization has paved the way for massive
inequality.
• Many cities, particularly those in the developing countries are
sites of contradiction.
• As a 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.
• Gentrification is a phenomenon of driving out the poor in favor
of newer and wealthier residents.
• Banlieue is an ethnic enclaves for poor Muslim migrants in
France.
• The middle class is also thinning out in the world’s global cities.
• Globalization creates high-income jobs that are concentrated in
global cities.
 Conclusion
• Global cities are sites and mediums of globalization.
• Global cities are material representations of the phenomenon.
• Through global cities, we see the best of globalization; they are
places that create exciting fusions of culture and ideas.
• Global cities are places that generate tremendous wealth.
• It remain sites of great inequality, where global servants serve
global entrepreneurs.