Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
4.1 Global Cities and the Limits to the Internet Economy
A long-standing myth about telecommunications is that they render cities obsolete.
While this fantasy can be traced to the post-industrial technocrats of the 1960s
such as Alvin Toffler, if not earlier, it persists tenaciously in the age of the internet.
Yet just as the internet was unfolding across the world stage, the recent round of
globalization has witnessed a resurgence of ''global cities'' (Sassen
1991
). Such
places are by definition tied through vast tentacles of investment, trade, migration,
and telecommunications to clients and markets, suppliers and competitors, con-
sumers and producers around the world. Global cities serve as the home to massive
complexes of financial firms, producer services, and corporate headquarters,
or ''command and control'' centers in the world system. Typically, the trio of
London, New York, and Tokyo is positioned at the top, with cascading layers
demarcated by successively smaller roles in the world economy, including cities
such as Paris, Frankfurt, Toronto, Los Angeles, Osaka, Hong Kong, and Singapore
(Beaverstock et al.
2000
). Because there exists a vast literature on this topic, it is
not necessary to recite all of their characteristics here. Rather, it is their role in the
internet-based economy, and the limits of the internet, which most concerns us.
Not surprisingly, global cities, and indeed, most large metropolitan areas, are well-
connected hubs with extensive fiber optic linkages, and often form constellations
of internet-related businesses within them.
The core of such conglomerations—Manhattan or the City of London—allow
for dense networks of interaction necessary to the performance of headquarters
functions, including: monitoring frequent changes in niche product markets;
negotiating with labor unions; keeping abreast of new technologies and govern-
ment regulations; keeping an eye on the competition; staying attuned to an
increasingly complex financial environment; initiating or resisting leveraged buy-
outs and hostile takeovers; seeking new investment opportunities, and so forth.
Because their raison d'etre cannot immediately be classified as ''economic,'' but
includes a vast variety of formal and informal cultural and political interactions
such as tourism, the media, and fashion industries, global cities are more than
simply poles for the production of corporate knowledge. The crux of global cities'
role in the post-Fordist world economy is to serve as arenas of interaction,
allowing face-to-face contact, political connections, artistic and cultural activities,
and elites to rub shoulders easily. At their core, global cities allow the generation
of specialized expertise upon which so much of the current producer services
economy depends (Howells
2000
). The creation of expertise is no simple task,
involving the transformation of information into useful knowledge.
Analysis of the functionality of global cities can draw much from the work of
Polanyi (
1967
), who offered a well-known and highly influential distinction
between explicit (or standardized) and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge refers
to standardized forms of information that are easily transmitted from one person to
another, including quantitative data, publicly known rules and standards, and
orderly records. Explicit knowledge is designed to be as free as possible from its
