Global Cities

Prof. Stephen Graham

Stephen Graham

Signs of an Urban Renaissance of Certain Cities Through New Technology and the ‘New Global Economy’

Local Examples: Newcastle Technopolis

“Silicon Alley” Televillage (Pink Lane)

“Sunderland “Teleport” Doxford Park

A Paradox: Globalization Processes, and the Use of New Transport and Digital Technologies, are Leading to

a Patchy ‘Urban Renaissance’ of Certain Cities and Districts of Cities

•  Paradox: distance-transcendence, ‘space-time compression’ leading to a growing salience of urban place in economic location

•  Cities linked into global network of cities but on very different terms

Cities Embedded in Stark Global Divisions of Labour: Two Broad Positions -- “Sticky

Places” versus “Slippery Spaces” •  Stark geographical divisions of labour linking

urban sites intimately across the world •  Global network of cities •  New technologies of communications and

transport used to refine such divisions, not overcome them

•  Geographer Ann Markusen defines “Sticky Places” (high-value added, ‘creative’ and central locations) and “Slippery Space” (peripheral locations where routinised work and labour are located)

First, Markusen’s “Sticky Places”

•  High value-added and creative locations within or near core, ‘global’ cities

•  Excellent transport and telecoms connectivity provided by market and infrastructure advantages

•  ‘Sticky place’ cities minimise risks to major finance, legal, headquarter and media/high tech companies through cutting-edge skills and highly diverse labour markets

•  ‘Soft’ social and cultural services and ‘cool’ urban ambience

•  Sustain and support continuous innovation and research and development through intense face to face and online contact

Loughborough University’s Inventory of World Cities

‘Alpha’ world cities like London •  Global stock exchanges •  Banking and corporate headquarters •  Fashion •  Media, film, TV •  Fashion •  Non government organisations •  International organisations/

governments •  Huge centres of symbolic property

development, infrastructural investments, main hubs of global airline, port, rail, telecommunications systems

•  Destinations of international migration •  Locations for international events,

sporting events and conferences •  Increasing sense of England being two

nations

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/223d9f04-2b26-11dc-85f9-000b5df10621.html#axzz1cjHpPT5T

Revitalised Urban Cores: Highly Localised Geographies of ‘Dot.Com’ Activity

•  Self sustaining cycles of innovation, speculation, venture capital, investment, migration create boom cities

•  Competitive advantage overcomes high costs

•  Gentrification and “cappuccino urbanism” leads to social exclusion

•  New York case study in video next session

New York’s “Silicon Alley”

‘Technopoles’ on Peripheries of Global Cities •  Main high-tech and corporate

research and development centres

•  Campus style, suburban environments

•  Relate very closely with major technology universities

•  Highly dualised labour markets: well rewarded technological elites and often invisible support workers

Silicon Valley is Archetype •  But technopole spaces actually

develop organically through intense research and development by entrepreneurs and small firms

•  Can boost dynamics once underway

•  But very difficult to engineer or create through planning and public policy alone, especially in peripheral locations

UK “Knowledge Corridor” - Oxford-Cambridge

Second, and in contrast, “Slippery Space” Cities

* Global peripheries in global N and S: Areas of low skills/wealth and/or high un- and under employment

•  Ruthless cost-based competition for globalizing, routine activities

•  Call centres, logistics hubs, free trade zones for manufacturing and assembly

•  Supported through: tax breaks, grants, free land, property and infrastructure

•  Such investments often intensely mobile. Often not self-sustaining, fragile. and require continuous subsidy

Data Processing, ‘Back Offices’ and Call Centre Parks

•  Global North and South competing with each other

•  Global “off-shoring” going on as mobile call centre investment moves from low cost regions in global north to rapidly growing high-tech cities in India, caribbean, Africa e.g. Bangalore (top), which are moving up the value-added chain

•  Global South ‘technopole’ cities have highly fragmented structures: export processing and high technology zones with excellent infrastructural connections elsewhere separated off from surrounding informal or shanty settlements (which are often demolished and starved of investment and infrastructure)

•  (Right: Bangalore, India)

Must Remember, Most Global Cities in South are neither ‘Sticky Places’ Nor ‘Slippery Spaces”

These are ‘Ordinary’ Cities ‘Off the Map’

•  Many large and fast-growing urban areas (especially in global south) do not seem to have strong role within formal, globalised, spatial division of labour at all

•  Subsistence and informal economies and settlements and local markets

•  Even many parts of cities with role in globalised economy operate in the same ways

•  Majority urban world: Must look beyond glitzy, iconic ‘global’ sites! Next: Chungking, China

But Even Here, Hidden, ‘Global’ Economic

Activities Exist •  Resource extraction,

mining, forestry, waste recycling

•  E.g. ‘E-Waste’ cities around Guandong, China

•  Where your VCR, mobile, PCs, TVs etc. end up!

Conclusions •  Cities are placed in very different positions in global

economy •  Embedded in stark geographical divisions of wealth,

power, technology and labour •  New technologies used to exploit those divisions, not

overcome them •  Power and wealth centre on the ‘sticky places’ which

orchestrate and organise global capitalism: ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ ‘global cities’

•  A second tier of cities has to fight to become ‘slippery space’ by inducing in routine, low value-added and fragile investments

•  Many of world’s ‘ordinary’ cities can attain neither status

We should remember that divisions of wealth, power and technology in a globalizing world are played out

within as well as between cities And that these tend to be exacerbated by

globalization trends

Next Session Video Case Study: The ‘Dot.Com’ Boom in the Pre-eminent ‘Sticky Place’ and ‘Alpha World City’ New York City

3 Questions •  How has New York’s position as a high-tech global

city and ‘sticky place’ effected the social divisions within the city

•  What have been the roles of new technology in the city’s renaissance and social conflicts over this process?

•  How have the processes of change depicted shaped the geographies of Manhattan?