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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."
If location doesn't matter. Then why is everyone getting ripped off from real estate cost.
Im reminded of school history lessons as a kid, full of stories of once great cities, now deserted because the rivers or trade routes that suported them changed. This is the same sort of thing, those cities are important because of the information that flows through them. How easy these days is it for information to change where its located? In the past a river would take hundreds of years to change its course. Nowdays, that cultural river can change a great deal in mere decades. How long ago was it that Miami was just a holiday spot?
As our economy depends more and more on services, people will tend to clump together to reduce travel costs and maximize convenience. The digital outsourcing trends that we see now don't fight this: they just link the clumps (ex: Bangalore to NYC). It's easier now to get services away from the city network, but still easier to get them within the network.
I find that as I interact with people from all over the world, on forums, and newsgroups, and in online games (my EQ guild had Canadians, and Australians, and French, and a few others, for example), the notion of countries, like "The United States", just doesn't seem that relevant any more.
I'm starting to feel that basically the world consists of here (basically, where the people I interact with outside the net are) and everywhere else. When I deal with someone who is not here, it doesn't matter to me if they are in Texas or New York or France. That the first two of those are in the same country as I and the third is not seems a silly distinction to make.
As economies move more and more toward services and not manufacturing, the countryside-- with scattered factory towns, resource locations (coal, iron), and certainly agrarian regions atrophe their youth to the capital metropolis.
I have seen this firsthand in London, where real estate prices continue to climb, while the Northern England and certainly Scotland prices are stable or slightly falling.
I saw this happen in Seoul, where there is currently a property bubble on the south side of the Han river, while villages south toward Pusan are growing more empty every year.
I am currently watching this happen in Tokyo, where every new building is full of "one room" apts catering to newcomers draining out of the countryside, and the towns on the far side of the island are nothing but grandmas and grandpas growing rice.
My point: Tokyo, London, Seoul, Paris, New York, and perhaps Sydney will continue to see strong local economies, while their surrounding areas stagnate. Meanwhile, manufacturing-based economies like China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Germany, Brasil, and perhaps Vietnam will see distributed development as factories seek cheap land and cheap raw materials.
davejenkins.com |
Location matters depending on one thing - the quality of local government.
Take North Korea for instance - it isn't that different from South Korea, and yet the people in North Korea are dying of hunger.
The only difference between the North and South Korea(s) isn't location, but rather, the governments that run the two places.
Even within a country, you can find that people of different classes congregate into different areas, and that is largely the effect of governments.
People paying hefty premiums for the real estate in High Class Area for many reasons - of course, the "High Class" does sound nice. But other than that, better schools, better security, better connections, et cetera do add up.
In slums area, like in shanty towns, people often don't even have to pay for the real estate they occupy, but they DO pay for the effects of CRIME, little or no chance of schooling, rampant joblessness, and so on.
All those can be and would be addressed effectively if you have a good government.
The Philippines as well as Myanmar were RICH COUNTRIES in Asia. Today, the people of both countries are suffering because of the failure of their respective governments.
On the other hand - we can see the rise of China - whether you agree or not, the present government of China is "better" in some ways, as compare to the past - and that allows the people of China to have a chance to move foward, and many do.
By the same token, the government of United States of America is failing, and we can see the effects - dropping standards of living, growing deficits, the exodus of jobs, the rising crime rates, and so on.
City Without Borders is just an idea. Cities such as New York City won't be in the list of City Without Borders for long, if New York City continues to be ruled by bad governments.
Other newcomers from South America or Asia or Europe may take its place, simply because talents will flock to places with good governence. And with the concentration of all those talents, miracles happen.
That's all.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
- Digital culture is potentially global culture. We find theatre productions from London, like "Les Miserables", becoming mega-hits on Broadway in New York City.
- The city scenes in the first Matrix film were shot in Sydney, the second in San Francisco, and yet on-screen they constituted an architecturally homogenous unidentifiable "global city."
- The increasing globalization of production creates a "global culture" that is cosmopolitan and robust in its diversity.
- Balancing this trend, however, we find a resurgence in international arts. Films like "Amelie" succeed because they inflect the emerging global culture with a local or regional cultural flavor.
- In addition, Chow Yun-Fat is not only a successful Chinese actor, but more importantly a successful global actor.
Each generation thinks that their time is the most important moment in history. It is the hubris of our species, and it leads us unfailingly to make bad decisions about the future, thinking we know more than our predecessors and as much as our successors. This is why each generation laughs at its ancestors and is laughed at by its descendants.Italian operas have been performed all over the world for centuries. What is different? Nothing.
Modern skyscrapers are designed more for efficiency than uniqueness, and with few exceptions are not terribly distinctive. Just because my city can be photoshopped to look like another one does not make me more a "citizen of the world."
What an asinine statement. My grandfather could walk into a store 50 years ago and buy a Japanese radio as easily as an American-made one. Did it make him more culturally aware?
Films like "Amelie" succeed because they are well-made and entertaining despite the subtitles, not because of them.
Mark Twain was an international star as well. So was Benjamin Franklin. Chow Yun-Fat is not a different species, just a different breed.
Come on, people; we have thousands of years of history to draw upon here. Can't we muster some perspective? Read Ecclesiastes--there is nothing new under the sun.
I think they felt a swell of pride when they got mentioned from TFA "News: In what began as a primarily geek phenomenon at Slashdot.org,"
And you accuse somebody else of spouting bunk? References or statistics, please, for your assertion that, umm, "most people would find highly dubious."
During the "days of the British empire", most people lived isoliated agrarian lives. This includes the people in the British Empire itself. The percentage of commerce that involved trade beyond a regional scale was probably far less than 5 or even 1% when viewed over the population of the earth as a whole.
This morning I had cheese made in Holland and France, an orange grown in Spain, some orange juice from Florida, and some crackers from Norway for breakfast on bowl made in China. I'd have to have been an aristocrat to achieve this at the height of the British Empire.
As is so often the case when reading academic articles, it's hard to determine whether I agree or disagree with the author. I do, however, disagree with the notion that the concentration of economic power in cities is some sort of new or increasing phenomenon. Cities have always been, essentially, points of concentration of economic power. Concentrated economic power might even be the defining characteristic of cities.
Many years ago, access to and control of natural resources such as salt or fish or arable land or water was the reason a city might develop. Today, access to man-made resources such as communications infrastructure, various markets, or even tax policies may be more important than natural ones. But the fact remains that different localities provide different operating environments, some of which are more advantageous to a given business than others. Place, therefore, still matters.
Jobs, from factory jobs to computer jobs are automated out of existence. Jobs also disappear when profit rates fall and capital investment falls (that's cyclical though). Supposedly jobs automated out of existence magically reappear as new jobs paying the same or higher wage. Keynes didn't think so, and despite the rhetoric, the US government and "business community" doesn't think so either.
If these jobs don't reappear, then why has unemployment stayed basically the same throughout the entire industrial revolution? I would guess that 90% of the jobs that were done in 1800 have been automated out of existence, so why isn't 90% of the workforce unemployed?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Like many other things in life, if it's worth trying and even if it's not, we've tried it in California. We already have a city without borders, we call it Los Angeles. Joking aside, even as an idea or culture, one could argue that Los Angeles is world wide.
You probably have no idea how much you're right on that one. If you live in a country as different from California as possible - Eastern Europe, for example - you are still somehow aware of various LA-specific cultural phenomena. For example, if you are a frustrated teenager with no clear weather forecast for the labor market, you express your frustration in terms of "South Central ghetto", even if you are actually white in a 100% white nation. It was perfectly parodied in the hilarious Ali G show. But it goes further, even if you are NOT a hip-hop music fan. Popular Dreamworks 3D cartoons like "Shark Tale" or even "Shrek 2", expect from the viewer to understand at least the basics of LA reality. Actually, many Hollywood filmmakers are just too lazy to ever move out of the city, so some popular LA (or rather "within 2 hours driving from Beverly Hills") vistas and locations are ubiquitous in Hollywood movies. Which, in turn, are ubiquitous in cinemas in such remote places as Kosice, Slovakia or Tigru Mures, Transilvania. Kids and teenagers learn how to live in a multi-racial sprawl-infested megalopolis even before they start to learn how to live in their own community. I find it scary, sometimes.
Excellent.
"...because they think Jesus...."
You express exactly the polarized thinking that a big city produces. Couldn't be that all us fly-overs are thinking individuals that have opinions and values (both valid) that differ from you, could it? No. It's got to be that we are unthinking, stupid, or duped.
Sorry, little man, you need to look for the mass of the iceberg yourself.
Still your point is very valid: It's starting to matter less where you are located and more how connected you are.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Cities are cheaper to maintain. They also allow for agglomerations and pools of skilled labor. There is a reason that airplanes are made where they are made. There is a reason that certain cities were at the center of the dot-com boom. Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco. MIT, University of Washington, and Stanford/Berkeley. What do they have in common? That's right, top of the line CS schools. Cities are the life blood of our economy. They are much cheaper to maintain than a huge network of rural homes and the physically bring people together, something that is very important to the creation of culture. Yes, great masses of people in single locations is a security risk, but then again, I seem to recall $2,000,000,000 being lost from tiny little programs running around our great decentralized network.
"World Cities" have been around for a long time, all the way back to the Roman Empire. Overcentralization was once a key part of the control system of kingdoms and empires.
Actually, finance is far less centralized than it used to be. There was a time within living memory when most major US companies were headquartered in New York. That's no longer the case. The international financial system, for most of the twentieth century, revolved around London and New York. Today, there are major financial centers all over the world. For a serious paper on the subject, see Rank Size Distribution of International Financial Centers.
Going against this trend is the centralization of power in the Washington DC area. For most of American history, there were few major businesses headquartered in the Washington area. That started to change some time during the Reagan administration, and now the Washington area is a major business hub, focusing on businesses which are defined by their relationship to federal regulation or spending.
I honestly dont know why people are still writing on topics that Alvin Toffler wrote about in 1969 with his wife. I mean, there was a movie made about his works...so its not as if it didn't gain attention...and as a movie, it would be able to hold attentions of americans better it seems. Its just future shock revisited.