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Cities Without Borders
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· Score: -1, Redundant
Place matters.
Sounds simple doesn't it? A no-brainer. And yet, sociologist Saskia Sassen at the University of Chicago has spent over a decade articulating precisely that point. In an era of increasing globalization and telecommunications, while most pundits laud the opportunities for decentralization, Sassen's observations suggest that economic production is centralizing away from national economies to an emerging network of "global cities." Because these global cities have closer ties to each other than to their surrounding regions or national economies, they mark a fundamental change in the nature of production. Or so the theory goes.
But what of digital culture? Does place matter? Is there a similar logic at work in the production and reproduction of digital culture? As Paul Gauguin once asked, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"
The Global Cities Network
"Cities are strategic places that concentrate command-and-control functions for the global economy" -- Saskia Sassen, The Global City.
The great economist Maynard Keynes warned against the effects of transnational capital mobility in the early 1900s. One hundred years later, we are just beginning to see those effects in the global economy. Because businesses depend heavily on a wide array of services -- financial, legal, etc. -- they must locate themselves in places that provide easy access to those services. Reciprocally, these transnational "producer services" must locate where their clients are. The net effect of this process has been the increasing importance of certain cities -- New York, London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Sydney, Miami -- that not only support complex webs of businesses but also participate in a global network for the production and distribution of finance and capital. The rise of a city is less a property of the city itself, and more a property of its position and relation in the network of global cities. As economists are fond of saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
But Sassen points out that this tide only lifts a few boats: those within the global cities network. As the middle zone splits, a new topology of core and periphery emerges. This process creates increasing inequality not only between cities, but also within them. The forces that originally created the rising middle class are now gone, replaced by forces of polarization and marginalization. In the end, Sassen wonders if such inequalities are sustainable, or if they are grim omens of future conflict.
But the centralization of global finance is only one criteria one can use to discover global networks of cities. In fact, Sassen admits that different forms of production may have their own global networks. For example, Miami acts as both a hub in a regional network of capital flows, as well as a node in the global cities network. Its power in both networks is a condition of the fact that it acts a bridge, or gateway, between the two networks, filling what Ron Burt has termed "structural holes." But is there a network of cities that acts as the core of digital culture?
Cultural (Re)Production
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.
By contrast, Sassen notes that global cities take on a distinct identity as they disconnect from their regional geography. If this is reflec
Slashdot Mirror
This article got posted some time ago, but it's still very relevant.
Place matters.
Sounds simple doesn't it? A no-brainer. And yet, sociologist Saskia Sassen at the University of Chicago has spent over a decade articulating precisely that point. In an era of increasing globalization and telecommunications, while most pundits laud the opportunities for decentralization, Sassen's observations suggest that economic production is centralizing away from national economies to an emerging network of "global cities." Because these global cities have closer ties to each other than to their surrounding regions or national economies, they mark a fundamental change in the nature of production. Or so the theory goes.
But what of digital culture? Does place matter? Is there a similar logic at work in the production and reproduction of digital culture? As Paul Gauguin once asked, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"
The Global Cities Network
"Cities are strategic places that concentrate command-and-control functions for the global economy" -- Saskia Sassen, The Global City.
The great economist Maynard Keynes warned against the effects of transnational capital mobility in the early 1900s. One hundred years later, we are just beginning to see those effects in the global economy. Because businesses depend heavily on a wide array of services -- financial, legal, etc. -- they must locate themselves in places that provide easy access to those services. Reciprocally, these transnational "producer services" must locate where their clients are. The net effect of this process has been the increasing importance of certain cities -- New York, London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Sydney, Miami -- that not only support complex webs of businesses but also participate in a global network for the production and distribution of finance and capital. The rise of a city is less a property of the city itself, and more a property of its position and relation in the network of global cities. As economists are fond of saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
But Sassen points out that this tide only lifts a few boats: those within the global cities network. As the middle zone splits, a new topology of core and periphery emerges. This process creates increasing inequality not only between cities, but also within them. The forces that originally created the rising middle class are now gone, replaced by forces of polarization and marginalization. In the end, Sassen wonders if such inequalities are sustainable, or if they are grim omens of future conflict.
But the centralization of global finance is only one criteria one can use to discover global networks of cities. In fact, Sassen admits that different forms of production may have their own global networks. For example, Miami acts as both a hub in a regional network of capital flows, as well as a node in the global cities network. Its power in both networks is a condition of the fact that it acts a bridge, or gateway, between the two networks, filling what Ron Burt has termed "structural holes." But is there a network of cities that acts as the core of digital culture?
Cultural (Re)Production
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.
By contrast, Sassen notes that global cities take on a distinct identity as they disconnect from their regional geography. If this is reflec