New York is Losing its Prominence

Apparently, this is the conclusion of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Charles Schumer in a new CFR article, "The Shifting Capital of Capital". Too many reports are showing London as the World's financial capital. If you ask me, this probably has more to do with the fact that one British pound is now worth two US dollars than anything having to do with US vs UK regulatory practices. Don't tell that to Mike and Chuck though - they are blaming it on Sarbanes-Oxley and are proposing ways to lessen some of the regulations put on corporate America after the Enron scandal. While I agree that some of these regulations are cumbersome and could use reform, this is not hitting the nail on the head. The US dollar is in big trouble and we need to balance the federal budget in order to ensure that all US cities remain competitive in the next 20-30 years.

Is Berlin Losing its Edginess?

According to an article in today's Los Angeles Times, the answer is a heavy handed yes. When I visited Berlin in the summer of 2004, it seemed like a relief after Paris and Amsterdam. The prices, while still in the unfavorable euro, were quite cheap. You could feel the history of the city because there were so many people who had lived in a divided city that for years symbolized a global struggle. I found myself roaming the city searching for more hints of its past and trying to figure out where it was going. When I came back there was a course being offered at my university by a visiting German professor on the history of Berlin. Through that course I learned more about the city's prewar image as a heathen's metropolis that the Nazi's ridiculed aptly to grow their power base. I also learned that although it is the capital of the largest country in Europe, it had a 20 percent unemployment rate and the headquarters of only two of the country's 100 largest corporations. It was explained that in many ways Berlin's economic situation more closely resembled a 1980s Detroit or Pittsburgh than a New York or a London.

While I'm saddened by the idea of that city changing, I think that it is inevitable. Again, it is the capital of a true world economic power and it has healed its most visible wounds. It serves as a reminder that cities are organic and change with their surroundings like humans do. The Berlin of my summer of 2004 was far wealthier than Isherwood's of 1924, less dominant and powerful than Bismarck's of 1874, and more at peace with itself than the Cold War symbol of 1964. Like our own lives - surroundings transform cities over time. Don't get too remorseful because witnessing those changes can be pretty exciting too.

Globalization Tests Dutch Liberalism

One of the most pervasive repercussions of globalization has been the rise of protectionism and xenophobia in many developed countries that for many years have been regarded has the most liberal and open societies on earth. In the United States, we have always had a swinging pendulum between more porous borders and putting up protectionist shields. In Europe, many societies are dealing with massive peacetime immigration for the first time in their histories. In a July 1 Washington Post article, "Liberal Dutch Identity is Tested" the resurgence of the orthodox Christian Union party is profiled. A fascinating NPR series, "Europe's Right Turn", which aired last November, analyzes this political shift throughout the rest of the continent.

Potomac Angst and the Reviewing of the City-State Relationship

Monday's TIME Magazine cover story, "Who Needs Washington?", featuring Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I-NYC), and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) reminded me of a recent Globalization and Word Cities (GaWC) Research Bulletin by P.J. Taylor entitled, "Cities and States: An Elemental Reinterpretation of their Origins and Relations". The piece does not go so far as to say that cities are gaining power at the expense of nation-states, but he argues that a fundamental reanalysis of how scholars approach city-state relationships is in order. The article gives a great overview of how this relationship has changed over time. If it is the mission of the two mavericks featured on TIME's cover to restructure this relationship it seems that there is ample historical precedent for it.

Most of World's Population will Live in Urban Areas by 2008

A new United Nations Population Fund Report, State of the World Population: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth, was released today. One key finding of the report got significant news coverage. In 2008, for the first time in world history more than half of the globe's population will live in towns and cities. The figure of roughly 3.3 billion urban dwellers is expected to grow to 4.9 billion by 2030. Surprisingly, overall rates of urban population growth will continue to decline during the next two decades. This is due in large part to declines in the populations of most of the world's mega-cities, such as Mexico City and Calcutta, among others. The upswing is actually fueled by growth in cities and towns with 500,000 people. This is a trend that is reminiscent of one documented by the US Census Bureau following the 2000 census.

NYC vs. Detroit: the Winners and Losers of the Global Era

Harvard scholar Edward Glaesar wrote an awesome opinion piece in today's New York Sun juxtaposing the experiences of New York City and Detroit in the Industrial Era (1890s-1950s) and the Global Era (1960s-present). These two pictures clearly illustrate this paradigm.

While I am often wary of the effects that globalization and deindustrialization have had on cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh among others, I too am attracted to the benefits that growing, dense, innovative power nodes bring. As a city lover, how could I think otherwise? Cities are more than just agglomerations of buildings. There is no experience greater for myself than to wake up in a city where change is in the air, where people flock to, not flock from.

Brookings published an interesting study, Restoring Prosperity: the State Role in Revitalizing America's Older Industrial Cities on why some cities are in ascendance and others are not, and while some of the conclusions may seem obvious, it's definitely worth a look.

Photo Credits: Time Warner Center, New York - MorgueFile.com; Michigan Central Train Station, Detroit - Dave Hogg, photographer

More Rankings: Moscow is World's Most Expensive City

London-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting released a new set of rankings of the World's 50 most expensive cities. Moscow topped the list, followed closely behind by London. The highest ranking US city, New York is ranked at 15, down from number 10 last year. The only other US city to crack the top 50 was LA which came in at number 42, down significantly from number 29 last year. Not surprisingly, most of the cities that saw big jumps were in Europe where the Euro and the British Pound continue to gain value versus the US Dollar. The methodology is more related to how much globe trotting executives should expect to spend in one city versus the other, and therefore it is not nearly as extensive or as related to the overarching "Globalization and Cities" subject as last week's MasterCard rankings are, but it's definitely worth a look.

Photo Source: Wikipedia.org

Globalization Meets Instrumental Rock in City of Echoes

Chicago-based rock band Pelican released the album City of Echoes last week. According to their website, Pelican has been touring domestically and internationally for several years now. Their latest album attempts to encapsulate their collective sense of place gained from roaming from club to club and from city to city in the age of globalization. While the album's monotonous melodies sometimes make the listener anxious and sometimes outright bored, according to one of the band's guitarists Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, quoted in a June 14 SF Station review, they are so on purpose to convey the album's main theme.


"City of Echoes stands for the feeling of sameness brought on by globalization. It's visiting countries and seeing slight differences through the window, only to end up at the club and feel like you didn't see anything at all, but it's also a tribute to the joy that burns inside when you reach a place and people who don't speak your language are rooting for your songs and welcoming you into their unique
environment."


The album's title track and a track entitled, "Bliss in Concrete", shift from steadily vacillating cruising rhythms to abrupt and shattering sections that serve to shock and disorient the listener. The often monotonous portions are greater than than shifting beats and seem to accentuate the globalization theme. The sameness is frustrating, yet comforting, serving to dilute the "culture shock" when it appears. The title track is available on the band's MySpace page and the "Bliss in Concrete" track is available on the intro to the band's homepage, where albums are available for sale. For a short history of Pelican and the making of its new album check out a recent Decibel cover story on the band.

London Ranks as World's Leading Commerce Center

MasterCard released a new ranking of global cities, "Worldwide Centers of Commerce". The list ranks London as the top commerce center in the world based on the methodology below. Most of the methodology factors seem to be variants of one factor, "Financial Deregulation". Another factor, "Knowledge Creation and Information Flow" seems to stray from the crowd, but I wonder how the authors of the study quantify that score. Still, the amount of data and insight provided on the MasterCard site is worth a look. A full list of the rankings and a fact sheet document are also provided.

Research Methodology

* Legal and political frameworks (10%) - Degree to which legal and political frameworks enable the emergence of a Global Center of Commerce.
* Economic stability (10%) - Degree to which a Center of Commerce is handicapped by an unstable economic environment, currency, or unpredictable inflation.
* Ease of doing business (20%) - Availability of quality, cost-competitive trade logistics; level of interconnectedness; and ability to attract and retain talent due to a high quality of living.
* Financial flow (22%) - Measurement of the city's actual output or financial achievement.
* Business center (22%) - Degree to which the city intermediates the flow of goods, services, people, finances and information, etc.
* Knowledge creation and information flow (16%) - Degree to which information flows freely and knowledge is generated.

African-European Migration and the Ironies of History

There was an interesting feature in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle entitled, "GLOBALIZATION COMES FULL CIRCLE: Illegal immigration from Africa repeats a cycle that began with early humans following their food supply to other continents". The piece puts the most recent waves of immigration from Africa to Europe in a historical context by pointing out that it is only a larger repeat of countless migrations going back 60,000 years. It is instead the degree of income inequality between wage earners in Dhaka, Senegal and Barcelona, Spain (the two cities mentioned in the article) that encourages countless thousands to brave the Atlantic Ocean waters between Senegal and the Canary Islands in hope of a better life. Of curse, one could say the same about those who die suffocating in overheated trucks or dehydrated in the Sonora Desert while crossing our southern border. This week as a heavily muddled immigration "reform" bill died a murky death in the US Senate, it is important to remind ourselves of the plight of the immigrant and of the often brutal hypocrisy that that we in the developed world find ourselves in when debating a subject which at its center is so simple to comprehend both emotionally and economically.

New Book Details New York's Growing Inequality since 1974

According to a June Brooklyn Rail article, "The "Greening" of New York City", New York labor activist Kim Moody's new book, From Welfare State to Real Estate: Regime Change in New York City, 1974 to the Present, provides an excellent analysis of the growing income inequality in New York's five boroughs since the mid-1970s. Moody argues that the city's notorious fiscal crisis during that year sent tremors through municipal officials which led them to take a drastic, more corporatist policy turn. Richard Wells, the author of the review, juxtaposes Moody's narrative within the context of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's recently released 25 year vision for the city, PlaNYC. Interestingly enough, the plan does not address the fact that New York City's poverty rate, 22 percent, is now twice the national average and that the top 20 percent of of New York earners now make 52 times more than the bottom 20 percent. The Mayor's plan seems to get mixed reviews across Gotham's political spectrum - see links below.

• Congestion Pricing: Good Policy for New York's Middle Class (Drum Major Institute for Public Policy)
• Fiscal Impact of PlaNYC (Gotham Gazette)

Shanghai's Growth Fueled Migration of 4,000,000 in last 20 years

A 7 May BBC Article, Shanghai: Creating a Global City, details China's largest city's meteoric rise to prominence over the past 20 years. The article examines the growing concentration of wealth in Shanghai, the center of an urban agglomeration now larger than New York City. The number of migrants that have moved to the city during this period seemingly dwarf any peacetime migration of recent memory, as an estimated 4,000,000 people have relocated from China's rural areas. For more information on the effects of globalization on Shanghai, check out the links below.

• City of Shanghai (municipal government site)
• Is Shanghai Really a Global City? (paper by Lin Ye, University of Louisville)
• Development Zones, Foreign Investment,
  and Global City Formation in Shanghai (Growth and Change, Winter 2005)
• China Copes with Globalization: A Mixed Review (IFG)
  

Global Shrinkage Debut

Welcome to Global Shrinkage. This blog is designed to document the effects of globalization on communities, with a primary focus on large cities and urban neighborhoods. So often the globalization discussion tends to focus on global trade and economic rights issues. The polarization of wealth in large global cities (New York, London, Hong Kong, etc.) is having a profound impact both on rural communities and smaller urban areas throughout the world. Also, this concentration of wealth is having consequences at the neighborhood level. In many of the cities which are reaping the greatest economic benefits from economic globalization, large segments of their citizenry are being displaced by rising rents, condominium conversions, and large increases in service costs in longtime middle-class and working-class districts. It is not the purpose of this blog to take sides on what is a very divisive issue. Economic polarization is fact. The richest income brackets and the lowest income brackets are augmenting across the developed world. Some say this is an inevitable outcome of global transportation improvements and the need for more low-income workers in the developed world. Others say there are alternatives. Throughout the course of this blog the focus will be on the effects, and though there will be an effort to present both views with each posting, an absolutist pro-con focus will be avoided at all costs.