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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."
Well, if you look at the location of large internet exchanges you'll find that most are build in or near large cities.
And sometimes something goes wrong and then a large part of the internet in that country goes down.
We had this kind of problem a couple of times due to power outages in Amsterdam.
The result is that a large part of the Netherlands was without internet.
Actually the trend is going in reverse. Telecommuting / telepresence means you don't need to be in the city.
Being in the city used to be useful for acquiring the extremely valuable commodity of trust. Personal relationships. Now, I can trust Larry Lessig (at least on Copyright law critique) because I know where he stands on those issues. We are on opposite sides of the planet. I also trust Warren Buffet as a source of information on investment issues. He's in Nebraska.
Warren B. might not take my calls but Larry probably would. And they're are plenty of 'mini' Warrens around.
I have no reason to visit Frankfurt or any of those other places.
I think that in many ways, Slashdot is a city. It certainly has enough viewers to otherwise be a small city in real life. There are a diversity of opinions and mindsets, and there's a system of government (moderation and administration), there's business that goes on, everyone has a place where they live (slashdot.org/~username)...and people have jobs (submitting articles, commenting on articles, moderating comments, paying subscriptions, voting in polls), some are volunteer, some you have to earn the privilege of being able to do, some actually cost money. Fascinating stuff...
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Saskia Sassen, professor of Sociology & author of "The Global City" is used as an authority in TFA. This post is not a slam but more of a critique of her as a lecturer.
.RAM file - Real Player required) Yes I attended this as it was mandatory but I was there with an open mind. We were required to attend and then discuss it at the next class meeting with our fellow students and our Senior Sem. professor.
As a graduate of RIT, it was mandatory to take Senior Seminar which is RIT's attempt to enrich the student with timely lectures from authorities in a field. The topic of Senior Seminar is on globalization, human rights, and citizenship.
You can find all the lectures online at http://www.rit.edu/~gannett/Archived.html (might I add that there are some really great lectures available) and you can specifically you can find Professor Saskia Sassen's lecture from December 13, 2001 Globalization or Denationalization? Economy of Policy in a Digital Global Age. (
The class, including the professor, agreeded that she is too far out into the fringes of her studies of sociology and thus is unable to effectivly communicate her thoughts to those in attendance. Our professor, he too a professor in the field of sociology, was both disgusted and outraged in regards to her lecture. Disgusted that she can not reach students and perhaps make them question why & how globalization changes our lives. Outraged that we had to listen to over an hour of uninterpretable socio-politic-economic mishmash of ideas. I came away from that lecture with nothing. I will wholly admit that I am not a peer of hers nor am I well versed in any social science. Perhaps I am way out of my element and all of us students in attendance are not the pinnacle of sociology & research like she is, but I was dumbfounded that I could walk away from a lecture and gain nothing.
Maybe she is a great authority on the topic of globalization, but her delivery on that topic left us feeling ill. Since we suffered through her lecture, I wonder if she really is an authority on globalization since many educated students and some of her peers were unable to discover it for themselves. If Sassen's lecture is measured against Marshall McLuhan's quote "The Medium is the Message", then Sassen's message becomes bunk.
For a critique of her book, see Amazon.com customer reviews.
There are a dozen cities in Asia (yes I know Australia is not Asia) globablly more important than Sydney ("the gateway to Woomera"). Sydney is a great place to (begin a) holiday, but except for the fact that it has a somewhat unique location, it is unexceptional from a business standpoint. You might raise the same objection about Miami, but given how much south / central american money passes through there, I can see a reasonable case being made for Miami. Sydney is not defensible as a top global business city unless you use the criterion "best of each continent", in which case they forgot McMurdo station off that list.
This article reminds me of the kinds of articles that were written in the early '90s about the fall of nation states and the emergence of a cosmopolitan information economy due to that newfangled internet thingy. Well I'm glad the days of millenarian doom and gloom are over and that we will go back to '90s optimism. (yes the world is a mess, but it was bad back then too. Remember it gets worse before it gets better) Now all I want is my VR helmet.
Sounds a lot like the theory of The Global Village from 1962
Underholdning.info
Unfortunately for them, their own plans are about to lead them to cultural ruin. Bush's plan to provide High Speed internet to the nation should be read as what to him would seem akin to the Rural Electrification Project. Where the idea was, lets get power to the people out in the farms so they will be more competive and produce more. That sort of backfired. They got used to the power and started wanting more. More TVs, DVD, Fancy cars and the lowly Banana.
The upshot was that the young started to abandon the farms in droves. As they did the cheap labor of the farm children was replaced by cheap labor from immigrants. The old cycle was that the Farm would be inherited by the children of the farmer and next generation would take over. As the found new jobs as computer programmers and got MBAs they let their parents sell of the old family farm to large agro businesses. Large Farms got larger and Cities got bigger.
Wiring the rest of the county will give reason for companies to relocate to cheaper parts of the US and bring good jobs to town who's main income was the local speed trap. If your a Conservative Rural Republican in a Red State, visions of selling farmland to city slickers for housing and commercial parks must seem like heaven. Voting for Bush was voting your pocketbook.
Now here comes the other side of the coin. Unlike mining towns of the 19th and early 20th Century you really can't lock people in. Your neigbors will undercut your housing deals because they all got buckets of land and nobody to grow whatever.
City Slicker Programmers and the upper skilled workforce are not Conservative Rural Republicans, There those damn Blue State Liberals. They eat fish RAW!!!!, A lot of them aren't even from the USA, most dress like they were extras in that confusing movie The Matrix. As Techs and Tech businesses move to the boondocks they will turn the red states blue.
Right now the current FUD is that Liberals don't respect people with Faith. The fact is that the rural people can't afford to break the back of the liberal technology complex. Ever wondered why Strict harsh and very communist China hasn't stompped all over Hong Kong? China needs Hong Kong more then Hong Kong needs China.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Now the cash market has become all electronic, yes the market place may exist in a building on the outskirts of Frankfurt, but the financial centre is no longer there. Much of the trading is actually taking place in London and Frankfurt becomes relegated to backoffice clearing and settlement operations.
What I'm trying to say is that whilst the market place is important, it could be quickly established elsewhere. Where the customers are becomes more important.
Essentiaally it means there is a movement towards a single financial centre serving a group of timezones.
See my journal, I write things there
I was working from home in the US and recently moved to the middle east. I still have the same job thanks to broadband internet and VoIP telephony. Cost of living here is much less, and it's nice to have the same US salary.
I read an interesting book several years ago, Revolt of the Elites, that is very much on topic. The author argues that a global economy represents the breakdown of the nation state as the central political-economic unit, as the global economy encourages a cosmopolitan mindset among those at the top who benefit from it.
While I don't agree that this represents "a threat to democracy" (just the opposite in my opinion), I think the book is very perceptive.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
"We might find individuals thinking of themselves as New Yorkers first and Americans second, or Parisiennes first and French second."
That is what is happening now. It is also the reason that New Yorkers and Parisiennes are looked upon so poorly by others in their own countries.
all that this means is that talking no longer requires us to be geographically next to each other. Great, the phone did that 100 years ago.
The UPS and FedEx example is interesting. It is almost as if a new class is being developed. The Business people of the world cannot be bothered to travel anymore, so they pay somebody to do it for them. You are still governed by geography though, you have simply outsourced the requirement.
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.
I don't mean to be a stickler about the crime thingy, but crime rates have been steadily dropping for the past decade or so.
Did nobody on slashdot take part in the US presidential election? Geography matters more than you think. The people we interact with in person have a much greater affect on us than those we chat with. For example, my wife's parents used to be flaming liberals. All the friends they talk to on the phone are similarly inclined. Then they moved to rural Idaho to retire. The people they interact with on a daily basis are biggots. Last time we saw them they were going on about how the gays are degrading the idea of marriage and how George Bush is a great guy. Both of them voted against Bush in 2000. Idaho corrupted them.
Not by any means universally true. Vancouver has the about the most expensive real estate in Canada and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who ascribes it to the quality of local government. A beautiful location, year-round temperate weather, even a similarity to Hong Kong's geography attracting Pacific Rim money are bigger factors which, in my opinion, offset what has to be the most slack, lazy and irresponsible (in the sense of procatively taking responsibility for anything) municipal government it's been my displeasure to live under.
What I think this article missed is that a lot of the "big money" does things like travel much of the year to avoid taxes. These folks are more likely to be found in places like Aspen or some of the nicer carribean resorts than cities. What really drives the cities are jobs that are located in cities for traditional or political reasons(i.e the New York Stock Market-the various political jobs in Washington DC). People with serious money have _choice_ and they usually don't for the most part choose to hang out in cities. Maybe some cites are doing better in the global economy-but with increased communication eventually the functions in those cities will move to someplace cheaper.
As the author of the mindjack article on Sassen's "Global Cities" concept, I must say I'm fascinated and delighted to see all the discussion.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with Sassen's basic premise, it does provide an interesting opportunity to muse on the effects of digital cultural production and reproduction.
My own theory of Panarchy is considerably different than Sassen's "Global Cities." Where we agree is that networks are on the rise, and old-fashioned power hierarchies are waning. All else is details.
I do think this transformation is something unique in human history.