Global City
As Global City (German Global City ) are cities designated, which are the focus of a new, transnational urban system. The most important financial markets , headquarters of banks and transnational corporations as well as business-related services such as legal, financial and business consultants, advertising agencies , accounting and auditing firms are concentrated in them. The term was coined in the 1990s by the urban sociologist Saskia Sassen .
requirements
The globalization of the world economy , especially since the 1980s, is a prerequisite for the emergence of a transnational city system . This is characterized by the massive increase in foreign direct investment , which mainly flowed into industrialized and emerging countries such as the People's Republic of China , but also increased in developing countries. Since then, the weight of transnational corporations has also increased and industrial production has been more and more distributed around the world in terms of profitability . In particular, labor-intensive industries have been relocated to free production zones in developing countries, where wages are very low. At the same time, financial markets around the world were deregulated and new financing instruments such as derivatives were developed.
features
The control functions of the now heavily fragmented industrial production and financial services are now concentrated in Global Cities. This only became possible with the development of new information technologies such as the Internet . Because now, with relatively little effort, production can also be monitored at remote locations and the productivity of countries, locations and companies worldwide can be compared.
The emergence of global financial and service centers created an increased need for business-oriented services that are located in close proximity to one another. In addition to the high-quality services mentioned above, the need for simple services from cleaning staff, couriers, security guards and high-quality cultural and recreational facilities for the generally highly paid specialists is also increasing . As a result, global cities have been the target of transnational migration since the 1990s and migrant communities often developed there.
The transnational city system
Global cities are at the center of the emerging transnational city system. They relate more to one another than to their immediate environment, from which they tend to decouple. For example, the development of land prices in the service districts of these cities can only be understood in relation to the land prices in other global cities and has less to do with the national price level.
New York City , Tokyo , London and Paris are named as examples of a global city . In Germany, Frankfurt am Main falls into the category of global cities. The importance of Frankfurt as an outstanding financial center and the internationally important Frankfurt am Main Airport speak for Frankfurt as a global city. Due to its polycentric structure, there are also other cities in Germany that are included in the expanded group of global cities, as at least some of them have functions of a global city. Examples are Hamburg , Munich , Düsseldorf or Berlin . In Switzerland, due to its great importance as a financial center, the city of Zurich is also counted among the global cities.
Many cities that have previously held an excellent position in the respective national city system are losing massively in importance. This applies first of all to the large industrial areas such as the Ruhr area , some port cities such as Marseille or Naples and many megacities in developing countries, which, however, largely consist of slums such as Lagos . On the other hand, cities like Singapore , Hong Kong , Seoul and Manila have developed into sub-centers of global cities because they have specialized in the direct control of transnational production networks.
The term world city is often used synonymously for global city; There is, however, a difference between these: The cosmopolitan city is a traditionally political and cultural center of global importance. A global city is to be understood as a global economic center. Both types of cities are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they very often go hand in hand.
See also
literature
- Saskia Sassen : Metropolises of the World Market , Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1996, ISBN 3-593-35459-4 .
- Albert Scharenberg (Ed.): Berlin: Global City or bankruptcy estate? An interim assessment ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall . Berlin 2000, ISBN 978-3-320-02012-5 .
- Mario Candeias : Neoliberalism, high technology, hegemony , Argument Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-88619-299-7 .
- Christian Zeller (ed.): The global expropriation economy , Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-89691-549-5 .
- David Clark: Urban World / Global City. London 1996, ISBN 0-415-14437-X .
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Zeller 2004, p. 95.