Slashdot Mirror
Cities Without Borders
An anonymous reader writes "There is a very interesting article about Cities Without Borders in the latest issue of Mindjack. The author, Paul Hartzog, argues that we are seeing the emergency of 'global cities' concentrating command-and-control functions for the global economy. For instance, the increasing importance of certain cities such as New York, London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Sydney or Miami shows they not only support complex webs of businesses but also participate in a global network for the production and distribution of finance and capital. This is just one example. You should read the original article to see if you agree with the author -- or not."
Why indeed?
English speaking? Proximity to water? Same timezone as the burgeoning Asian markets, yet Anglo-friendly for multinationals wanting to build their presence in Asia.
If you consult some studies from people who have actually the phenomenon of the 'Global City', you'll find that Sydney meets the criteria, whereas, for example Singapore (trotted out as the 'real' Global City in the region) is better described as a 'city state'.
Sydney has established itself as the leading Australian city in world city terms (Baum,1997; Stimson, 1995). It is the major international air hub, is the most important financial centre and, during the growth in Asian economies, extended its role tobecome a location for many transnational corporations wanting to service south eastAsia.
With your final comment - you come off sounding like you have "Tall Poppy Syndrome". Your city not on the list hey?
firstly, what a snide and useless remark.
It is quite easy to find information that supports Sydney as a global business city.
Australia is the 11th largest economy in the world and Sydney its largest, most international city and the economic capital. Set on Port Jackson Harbour, the city has a long history of trade, commerce and finance.
Many multinationals have their Asian-Pacific headquarters in the city, including Price Waterhouse Coopers, Compuserve and BT. Others such as IBM, Coca-Cola and Unilever have offices here.
Taken from here
Sydney is often included along with other noted business cites such as singapore.
Sydney is attractive for its language diversity, and Morgan Stanley has located some of its back-office operations there. Tokyo and Hong Kong are both a bit too expensive for such operations
it is becoming increasingly common for Chinese companies to raise money not just on the Hong Kong market, but also in other markets such as Sydney or Singapore.
Taken from here
And other information from NSW.gov site.
# the most multicultural city in the Asia Pacific
# 70% of the nation's top 250 IT&T companies are headquartered in Sydney
# base for 44% of regional call centres in the Asia Pacific
# lowest unemployment rate in Australia
# major Asia Pacific financial centre
# information communications technology capital of Australia
link
And
Australia is once again among the leading nations in terms of economic growth. For the second year running, the worldwide executive opinion survey conducted for the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook considered Australia's economy as the most resilient in the world.
Of the 53 authorised banks with operations in Australia, 40 are based in Sydney. This includes nine of the 11 foreign subsidiary banks in Australia and the 10 largest investment banking groups. Major foreign banks with operations in Sydney include JPMorgan Chase, ABN Amro, Citibank, and Deutsche Bank. Other global banks have established highly successful back office operations in Sydney. These foreign banks benefit from Sydney's time zone advantage, spanning the close of business in the United States and the opening of the European trading day.
Taken from here and here
Cheers
If you read the article, you would know that it was in complete disagreement as well. The article is claiming that this idea of global cities being the centralization of a command-and-control structure is failing to notice the the command-and-control structure is being inherently undermined, delegitematizing the entire idea.
The article points to blogs, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, copyleft, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and several other items as examples of how bottom-up creation is replacing top-down.
The article quotes Thomas Malone in claiming that society is moving from "command-and-control to coordinate-and-cultivate." That is, rather than actually being in charge (Bill Gates setting up Microsoft) the leader only directs (Linus Torvalds leading Linux).
Initially, it would seem that such a decentralized system would be so disorganized that it would not function effeciently, but this ignores much sociological and psychological evidence on three important issues: motivation, agreeability, and capability.
Motivation: Intrinsic motivation is always stronger than extrinsic motivation. If the motivation is a genuine personal desire (fun), it is always more effective than a trumped up external desire (money). This results in the quality of work on volunteer projects commonly being much higher.
Agreeability: People inherently want to agree. People will agree with something if possible, so even without a strict command structure, a good leader will be followed. This removes much of the tension from having no clear leader, because that leader does actually exist.
Capability: Nobody is capable of handling every situation. In a strict command structure, the leader must be able to handle every situation/delegate it to someone who can. However, the direction on that issue must come from the commander, meaning that when a troublesome situation arises in a command system, it cannot be dealt with swiftly. By contrast, the open system allows the person who can deal with the problem to just come forward and do so, removing many of the failure points in a command system.
Of course, the last bunch of what I said was my interpretation, not just what was in the article. You may get something else out of it.
The exact opposite is true in the US. The death of many US cities occured between the 50s and the 80s. Look at Philadelphia, a city that lost 500,000 people between the late 1950s and today. Where did they go? New York? Baltimore? yes, some did, but most went to the suburbs. This is happening all over the US. Just as our cars and waist lines are expanding, so are our cities.
Sorry, had to jump in here, even though I'm not the original poster. I'm struggling to not comment on the fact that this was modded "insightful" when it is completely wrong. In actual fact, the global economy was indeed more globalized during the latter days of the British empire than it is now; capital outflow from the UK has never recovered to the same level (as a percentage of GDP) as it was in 1914. In addition, no country (yes, including the US) has ever had as high a rate of capital outflow as was achieved by the UK before the First world war. Also, you really need to check your history books - during the "days of the British empire" I think you'll find that most people in the UK were living in cities. (certainly far more, as a percentage of population, than in the US). Whilst you're there, read a history of the East India company, or any book about corporatism, to see what globalisation really was about back then.
Well done on your breakfast, but it's nothing new; certainly a member of the Eurpoean middle classes at the beginning of the 20th century could have done the same.
Dan.
From the OED:
Emergency:
1. The rising of a submerged body above the surface of water; = EMERGENCE 1.
2. a. The process of issuing from concealment, confinement, etc.; = EMERGENCE