Post on 09-May-2015
transcript
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?