Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
tain cities and the rest of the world. Even though London
and Paris are a short distance apart, both function as world
cities in part because of the role they play within their
respective states: each became a magnet for economic and
political activity within its state, and then the globe.
Some countries such as the United States and
Germany have two or more world cities within their state
borders. They thus do not have a single, distinct pri-
mate city. To understand the role of cities in globalization,
the services cities provide to places and peoples around the
world and the interconnectedness among cities must also
be considered. Geographers are now working to uncover
the globalized fl ows and processes occurring across world
cities, bringing them closer together.
WHAT ROLE DO CITIES PLAY
IN GLOBALIZATION?
Globalization, as we defi ned the term in the fi rst
chapter, is a set of processes and outcomes that occur
on the global scale, circumventing and leaping over
state boundaries to affect the world. In the processes of
globalization, cities are taking over in ways we barely
understand. Most statistics about economic activity at
the global scale are gathered and disseminated by states.
Nonetheless, many of the most important processes occur
among and between cities, not states as a whole, masking
the integral role world cities play in globalization.
World
cities
function at the global scale, beyond the reach of
the state borders, functioning as the service centers of the
world economy.
Contending that models of cities and hierarchies
of cities within states (such as Christaller) no longer rep-
resent what is happening with the city, Taylor and Lang
maintain that the city has become “something else” than a
simple CBD tied into a hierarchy of other cities within the
state. The world city is a node in globalization, refl ecting
processes that have “redrawn the limits on spatial inter-
action,” according to Felsenstein, Schamp, and Shachar.
A node is a place through which action and interaction
occur. As a node, a world city is connected to other cit-
ies, and the forces shaping globalization pulse across these
connections and through the cities.
Most lists of world cities provide a hierarchy of the
most important nodes, the most important world cities,
then the next most important, and so forth. Virtually all
agree that New York, London, and Tokyo are the most
important world cities, but beyond that point, the defi -
nition of what makes a world city and the list of world
cities changes depending on the perspective of the
researcher. Geographers Jon Beaverstock and Peter J.
Taylor and their Globalization and World Cities Study
Group and Network have produced nearly 200 research
papers, chapters, and books on the geography of world
cities over the past few years. By studying which cities
provide producer services (integral to the processes of
globalization) in the areas of banking, law, advertising,
and accounting, these geographers have produced an
inventory of world cities mapped in Figure 9.42. They
delineate 10 Alpha, 10 Beta, and 35 Gamma world cit-
ies. The Alpha cities (London, Paris, New York, Tokyo,
Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan,
and Singapore) have a global capacity to provide services
in the world-economy.
World cities do not exist merely to service players in
the global economy. Major world cities such as London
and Paris are also capital cities. States concentrate devel-
opment and encourage interconnectedness between cer-
Cities as Spaces of Consumption
In addition to being nodes in globalization, cities are
also products of globalization. Major changes in cities,
such as the redevelopment of New York's Times Square
and the remaking of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, are the
result of global processes. Frank Roost has found that
“the global media industry is becoming the driving force
in the reshaping of cities” such as New York and Berlin,
turning city centers into
spaces of consumption
. Global
media giants such as Time Warner, Viacom, and Walt
Disney use cross promotion to encourage the consump-
tion of their products. It is no accident that characters
on television sit-coms produced and aired on ABC (a
television channel owned by Walt Disney) visit Disney
theme parks or host Disney Princess-themed birthday
parties on a given episode. These same media companies
are investing heavily in urban centers in order to create
entertainment spaces, places where tourists can go to
consume their products. Media corporations are help-
ing transform urban centers into major entertainment
districts (“variations on a theme park”) where items are
consumed.
For example, in New York City, government entities
began to try to redevelop Times Square in the early 1980s.
At that time, this area of the city was known for its neon
lights, pornography movie houses, prostit
ution, and other
illicit economic activities. The city sought to push these
businesses out of Times Square and return the business
district to a conglomeration of restaurants, hotels, bars,
and entertainment spaces (as it had been before World
War II). Over the decade of the 1980s, the city closed
hundreds of small businesses in Times Square. In 1995,
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani reached a deal with Michael
Eisner, CEO of Walt Di
sney. The mayor promised to
remove the remaining sex shops, and Eisner committed to
renovating the New Amsterdam Theater, a focal point in
Times Square (Fig. 9.43, left and right). Secured with a
$26 million low-interest loan from the State of New York,
