Jenny Walty

As a New York City resident, this topic is of particular interest!

Cities have succeeded in concentrating economic and political power because they provide the best social and physical environment for the reproduction of capital and labor, and their growth has been exponential in the last century. As Blumenfeld argued, the specialization and cooperation of labor that emerged in the 20th century across the globe has produced a universal urban form found in all economic systems. (Angotti, 1995) New technologies have simultaneously supported the centralization of corporate management in global cities and the extension of colonial profit structures.

New telecommunications technologies and the intensification of global trade have used certain cities as key nodes in their network of transactions. The complexity of global markets requires intense coordination of professional services including technical, legal, financial, marketing and headquarters in a new type of production process that must be centralized and place-bound to get the work done. “It is precisely because of the territorial dispersal facilitated by telecommunication advances that agglomeration of centralizing activities has expanded immensely.” (Sassen, 1999) Global cities serve as the central nervous system of hierarchical command and control for international trade and investment. These professional services and others that support the professional workforce cannot be provided remotely and require local providers. “Goods and services produced within a city for local consumption… are likely to remain a very significant percentage of the total.” (Mitchell)

In this new system, global cities have been provided an alternate legal framework that exempts from national laws, for example New York City’s international financial zone, thereby ceding national territory (Sassen, 1999). Nations are allowing capital to move freely, without regulation, but have not provided the same legal structures to the people who provide the necessary services. Both rich and poor people in the cities—both transnational professionals and migrant workers—have a transnational identity rather than a territory-based identity. No longer place-based communities, cities are more dependent on the global network than the region or nation they ostensibly belong to.

This new, networked colonialism concentrates the working population into urban centers, and creates competition between service workers and the more valorized professional sector. Low income service workers are the losers in the contest, subject to wage exploitation, cost inflation for housing and basic needs, informal economies and ghetto-ization. The result could be seen as a “dual city”—a shining central district and a peripheral slum—as in Rio de Janeiro and the favelas. Approximately two-thirds of the world’s metropolitan population lives in mass poverty (Angotti, 1995) while the managerial technocratic political elite create exclusive spaces in city centers. Investments in city infrastructure continue to be concentrated in the center to serve the needs of global capital.

The result is cities made up of spatially coexisting but socially exclusive groups and functions that live in increasingly uneasy tension and defensive spaces, and identities being defined by the appropriation of space (Castells, 1993). In addition to the concentration of working poor in global cities, “those who are least integrated into modern society…are concentrating within the highest-density portions of the large metropolitan centers,” (Webber, 1968) disconnected from the capital/labor markets.

The costs of being a global city have not been examined in relation to the benefits. The benefits are that cities collect huge revenues from the global financial industry and the service complex that supports it. New York City tax revenues generated by Wall Street in 2006 were roughly $2 billion, but to put that in perspective, the City’s budget was $41 billion dollars in fiscal year 2007 (Budget Summary, Fiscal Year 2008). The costs to maintain the amenities of central business districts are high and include seemingly unrelated expenses like world-class cultural attractions and entertainment; heavy traffic and transportation needs including regional rail networks, highway systems, air travel, and the resulting congestion and wear; delinquency, property damage and an urban war of the disenfranchised; and the security requirements of a vulnerable infrastructure in the context of constant border crossings.

Policy and planning impact the equity of global cities through form, and planners can consider form with the goal of increasing equity and access to resources. The coordination of the global production process requires actual infrastructure, so transportation planning is needed for international airports and regional railways and highways. Regional transportation is particularly important as it provides a foundation for the growth of global support complexes as well as a diverse economic base for the metropolitan area. The concentration of communications infrastructure, built alongside transportation infrastructure, can be utilized by diverse economic nodes to support regional economic growth, development and competition.

Social services planning is urgently needed in migrant and low income populations in the cities. In addition, changing cultural norms are creating different demands for the delivery of services; for example childcare is as important as housing to utilize the workforce efficiently. The people who are disconnected from the global market and ghetto-ized in inner cities or suburbs need to be reconnected to the labor market through job training and workforce development. Planners can support social capital by protecting and expanding public space. Social capital is a key component for successful democratic dialog as well as the creative capital that gives cities a competitive edge.

Planning speaks to infrastructure and communities, but at the most common level planning is embodied in policy and law. Planners are well placed to engage the social and economic policies that support globalized trade by assessing and reporting on the local effects of these policies. In addition to informing policy making, planning is a function of local government, and local authorities have some power over the place-bound infrastructure of globalized markets.

Manual Castells argues that the effectiveness of political institutions, “will depend more on their capacity for negotiation and adaptation than on the amount of power that they command.” Planners are trained negotiators and are constantly challenged to adapt in situations where they command limited power; they could lead local governments in this new flexibility. Local governments should be able to connect with other municipalities and cooperate to ensure they are not being played one off of the other by global capital. Planners are already involved in regional coordination and could play a vital role in this endeavor.

Local societies and global capital must acknowledge their interdependence and enter into a new relationship. I think this is starting to happen, as corporate capitalists start to invest in equitable development. Michael Bloomberg is an example, he created a powerhouse of the networked age—Bloomberg LLP—an information service to support global capital. Now he is now earning $1 per year as the Mayor of New York City and trying to achieve some equity, meet social service needs in the City and develop human capital. To achieve these goals, local government must engage with communities in a democratic dialog to ensure representation at the table with capital and development interests. Citizen participation—on the basis of strong local communities that feed government information, submit demands and ensure the local government’s legitimacy—will be essential in managing the new urban contradictions (Castells, 1993).

Our identities and cities are no longer defined by territory, and so as planners, our attention to problems cannot be strictly local in nature. We need a vision to guide us of what we want from the global cities of the future.