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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?
- 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.
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!
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.