Globalization has many consequences. But one of its more ubiquitous effects is the rise of global cities. Social scientists who made it their lives work to focus on the study of cities and the relatively new phenomenon called global cities are prone to generalize that this type of megalopolis is very much needed in this new global economy. But in recent years the same experts are also saying that while the creation of global cities is inevitable, the negative consequences such as those related to overpopulation, high crime rate, pollution, and racism should not be considered as an acceptable outcome of global cities. For the sake of this study, the focus will be on the city of Los Angeles, California, and how it emerged to become one of the most important global cities in the world today.
Globalization
Before going any further it is important to make a quick detour and examine a related phenomenon. Globalization is an idea that must first be understood to completely grasp the concept of global cities. Globalization is of course brought about by the rapid developments in transportation, communication, and the ability to transfer money from one place to the next. But the more technical term for this is Foreign Direct Investments, also known as FDI. The aforementioned technological breakthroughs in transportation and communication resulted in the movement of money, people, and products all over the world.
Another major consequence of globalization is the decline of national or government ownership of giant corporations and transforming these businesses into “transnational corporations” – business entities that are without borders and can create considerable changes all over the world. In the past, it would have been impossible to establish a conglomerate without the aid of national governments. In fact, it is common to find governments interfering in the business aspects of many giant corporations. This is seen in national industries that are heavily regulated by the government. But the United States as well as other highly industrialized nations led the way in the creation of a new system where instead of government interference, the free market will be given a free hand to create checks and balances – therefore ensuring sustainable growth.
This led to the rise of transnational companies that are controlled by corporate leaders and their major shareholders. These leaders and decision-makers need not have the same citizenship and may have varied interests outside their business dealings in the said transnational corporation (Sassen, 2002). Therefore Japanese businessmen can inject FDI into a transnational corporation that has its headquarters in Finland and American businessmen can move millions of dollars in investment money to transnational corporations whose business address can be found in Europe.
Global Cities
It is possible to imagine a mega-city without the forces brought about by globalization, but it would be impossible to imagine the existence of a global city without globalization. This is not merely a play of words because it can be easily argued that without the telecommunication, transportation, and financial networks built by globalization there is no point in having a global city. Thus, if New York continued to influence the rest of the Eastern part of the United States without having an impact in other countries of the globe then it would develop into a mega-city with lots of people and lots of businesses but it would be a city that is confined to the U.S. mainland and could never be a hub for international trade.
According to one study, “A global metropolis has an unlimited periphery … It takes its populations and raw materials from anywhere on the globe, and likewise sends it emissaries, exports its capital, and sells its commodities anywhere on the globe” (Prakash & Kruse, 2008). It is a place where a great number of people will migrate into and from this batch of newcomers the city can develop a potent human resource that can either provide cheap labor or intellectual capabilities that can solve a host of problems in the international scene. The cheap labor can produce quality products and yet produce them in a cost-efficient way. But the skilled laborers or skilled technical workers such as programmers coming in from India and other Asian countries can be used to make high-tech solutions for a world craving for such expertise.
A global city serves a particular purpose and it is to sustain globalization. There is now a need for a “center” for making business decisions as well as the hub into which all communication will flow and must be processed. There is also a need for a “center” where money gravitates as a tornado sucks in air to fuel its rampage across open land. Therefore a global city can be seen as a command center and at the same time a financial center. But some said that it can be more than that (Sassen, 2001). It can also be a place where innovative products and ideas can emanate and from this location, the same can be exported all over the world and creating significant changes.
Sassen pointed out that for a megalopolis to be considered as a global city, it must fulfill the following criteria:
- functions as highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy;
- functions as key locations for finance and for specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading economic sector;
- sites of production, including the production of innovations;
- markets for the products and innovations produced (Sassen, 2001).
It can be surmised that a global city is a city where one can find a concentration of corporations that can easily influence the behavior of the world’s population. It is also a command center where business leaders and financial advisers congregate to make decisions that will affect the lives of millions of people, not only in the local area but also individuals who live thousands of miles away. These men are women are either consumers of their finished products or they are employees and beneficiaries of the investment money that is being controlled by the said corporate leaders.
As mentioned earlier, global cities must be a major player in international finance. It is the place where investors would send their money, it is done through electronic transfer of course but the location of the facility that is doing all the processing can be found in a global city. Aside from the handling of funds another related feature of a global city is the capability to offer highly technical and highly –specialized services. This can be accounting or the use of consulting firms that will help investors decide the best way to spend their money.
Moreover, it must be pointed out that one of the most important contributions of Sassen is the insight regarding the idea that global cities focus on specialization (Sassen, 2001). Accordingly, global cities focus on the production of specialized services, “…needed by complex organizations for running a spatially dispersed network of factories, offices, and service outlets…” (Sassen, 2001). Aside from becoming centers of management for a dispersed network of production facilities, global cities are also centers in which one can find high-level business services such as accounting, economic consulting, and various types of services that require high-level technical knowledge (Sassen, 2001).
A global city is also a place where one can find a high concentration of innovative people and organizations that are producing innovative ideas that in turn contribute to the globalization of the whole planet. These innovative ideas can be in the form of cutting-edge technologies in communication, transportation, electronics, etc. It can also be in the form of creative solutions to financial problems brought about by the massive influx of funds from different parts of the world. Innovation can also be in the form of products that can revolutionize the way people live.
Finally, a global city is not only a market for the products and innovations produced but it also could export this all over the world. The ability to market these products and innovations is a testament to its having the necessary infrastructure, the necessary know-how, and the necessary human resource to be included in an elite list of global cities. If a mega-city can pass the test then it can be compared to leading global cities in the world such as New York, London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, and Paris.
City of Angels
In Southern California there are at least five cities that can earn the distinction of becoming a global city and these are listed as follows:
- Los Angeles
- San Diego
- San Bernardino
- Riverside
But for the sake of clarity and focus, this study will only consider Los Angeles, California. Applying the abovementioned criteria to this city, one can say that the City of Angels can pass the test with flying colors. According to a group of researchers, the people of Los Angeles were able to establish a global presence through the following industries:
- Oil – this region is blessed with oil fields that in their heyday produced thousands of barrels of oil per day.
- Motion Pictures – there is no need to elaborate as to the global impact of Hollywood.
- Aircraft production – one major component of globalization is the rapid development of transportation technology and Los Angeles, through its manufacturers of sophisticated aircraft technology contributes to the globalization of the world.
No oil can be found underneath the city of Los Angeles. Crude oil was drilled and harvested from nearby regions but the management of such precious resources was conducted in the city. The owners of the corporations that extracted oil lived in Los Angeles and their offices were located there (Prakesh & Kruse, 2008). The movie industry on the other hand is a place where innovation in the art of filmmaking contributed not only to the rapid growth of LA as a city with huge potential but it made it a city that is instantly recognizable around the world. When it comes to the creation of airplanes used for commercial and military purposes, the presence of corporations that control this industry made LA a very important city that the Federal government could not afford to ignore.
Consequences
Migration and Issues Regarding Race and Ethnicity
One historian was able to describe it eloquently – the way a mega-city like Los Angeles can create something out of nothing – by using the imagery of force field around a high-tension wire crackling with energy. He said that a mega-city like Los Angeles can be likened to this force field, able to generate powerful surges of energy that can create and obliterate at the same time and he expounds on this by saying:
Without any warning, a flash of energy short-circuits the field and precipitates a shopping center so big that it needs three or five million people with reach to make it pay. Just as the dust has settled, there is another discharge of energy, and an office park erupts out of nothing, its thirty-and-forty-story towers rising sheer out of what had previously been farmland. The two have no visible connection, yet they are part of the same city (Abu-Lughod, 1999).
It is hard not to be electrified by the recent description of how a global city like Los Angeles can create and destroy at the same time, especially when one thinks of the consequence of urban sprawl. The mega-city has to give up something for it to become a truly global city. It requires significant population growth. These newcomers can be utilized as factory workers, utility workers, servants in homes and offices, skilled laborers, tech-savvy personnel, and even as part of the leisure industry, put together to sustain a growing city pushed to its limits. The increase in growth will also require offices, hence the description of a real estate development that sacrificed farmlands in the altar of modernity and urbanization. These new migrant workers will also need new homes. The newcomers may settle for the cramped and dirty accommodations that can be found in the inner cities while the middle-class would demand homes in suburbia.
People coming in from Asia, Latin America and Mexico saturated LA with people of diverse races and nationalities. This in turn created a problem that is common to global cities around the world. It is both a blessing and a curse to be able to have migrant workers moving into a city. This can produce opportunities as well as huge problems for the city and its leaders. One significant impact is the movement of the white middle-class families from the city into the suburbs and when they transferred to a new location they brought with them their influence and their prestige with them leaving the inner-cities in the hands of migrant workers who are still struggling to make sense of their new environment.
Ironically, the movement of people from the congested areas of LA into the more relaxed settings in the suburbs can contribute to inequality. But before that, it has to be explained why those who can afford to live outside the city proper are choosing to do so and these are the reasons why:
- Physical quality of the environment – quieter places that offer more clean air and greenery and a lot less traffic, pollution, and stress.
- The social quality of the environment – allow for a more relaxing lifestyle as opposed to the rat race in the city plus the chance to live in a more community atmosphere (Woods, 2005, p. 78).
But when the middle-class and the upper-middle-class component of the population decided to move out, they brought with them all the good things that they could have done to improve the inner-cities of LA. Thus, they not only forced the geographical transformation of the outskirts of the city but they also created a vacuum that will be filled by migrants from all over the world.
There is a melting pot of cultures and nationalities that is happening in LA; and in this pot the cooking is uneven, meaning there will be inequality when it comes to who will receive help from the government and who will have access to resources. One of the indirect effects of urban sprawl is the widening gap between rich and poor. There are better schools in the suburbs than those in the inner-cities. It is easy to see that there are more people living in inner-cities than in the suburb but in a America and particularly Los Angeles, democracy is not really a rule by the majority but the rule of the most influential. Without a doubt, the most influential people in Los Angeles lived in gated communities and not in the graffiti-filled neighborhoods of the inner-cities.
One aspect of racism is inequality in the workplace as well as the perceived bias towards people of color. A racist can easily link African-Americans and Chicanos to a life of crime. But there is another aspect of racism which is that people of color are favorite targets of unscrupulous men and women raring to earn a quick buck. In one report the current mortgage problems in America are the result of how shady lenders tried to exploit members of minority groups and the loopholes in the system that enabled brokers and other agents to earn from unsuspecting African-Americans and Latinos (Garcia, Lardner & Zeldin, 2008). The greed of some people knew no bounds.
High Crime Rate
There can be many factors that contribute to the high crime rate in Los Angles. It can be argued that in an area with a high concentration of people, it is inevitable that chaos and criminality will reign. It takes a lot of resources to govern a city as big as LA and at the same time, it requires tremendous effort to manage a city populated with people of diverse socio-cultural backgrounds. It can also be argued that in a place where there are so many immigrants there will be unscrupulous individuals who will take advantage of those unable to understand the language, culture, and social systems of a new city.
Still, there is another major factor that must be seriously considered by policymakers in their attempt to curb the high crime rate of this city and it is none other than racism. This is not a new issue and yet the problem persists even in the latter part of the 20th century, “Asian, Latino, African-American migrants to Los Angeles had long experienced low wages, poverty, racism … which resulted in much higher rates of poverty for blacks and Hispanics than for whites” (Abu-Lughod, 1999). It is interesting how the author group together the terms low wages, poverty, and racism. These three related terms are feeding off each other to create a life that is unbearable for many. It is no longer a mystery why many of the Latinos and African-Americans in LA turn to a life of crime.
There is a historical basis for these claims. In 1943 when LA was fast becoming a global city there was a frame-up of 22 young Chicanos. Seventeen were convicted of crimes that they did not commit and 12 of them were convicted for murder. Due to the tireless effort of some concerned citizens, the ruling was reversed in favor of the migrants with Mexican blood, but not after moral damage has been done to them and the society at large. This prompted former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles to speak up and he said, “Discriminations of this character inevitably cut deep … They create lasting resentments, which no eloquent speeches by government officials, nor government policies, however wise can ever hope to remove” (Endore, 1978). Welles was right on target.
It must be made clear that the problem of high crime rates is not unique to LA. In one study on prison overcrowding, it was found out that in 2003 alone, “…22 states and the federal prison system reported operating at or above capacity. The federal system was estimated to be operating at 39 percent, and overall the state systems were operating at 14 percent above capacity” (Clear, Cole & Reisig, 2005). But looking at the great number of immigrants and the clash of different cultures it does not take much to understand the crime issue in LA. What is important though is to understand that racism can easily exacerbate the problem.
Racism breeds poverty and violence. If there is no equal treatment then those who are on the receiving end of racism will perform the same work but will not be paid the same amount. But it does not only end in unfair business practices, racism also extends to public order and law enforcement. If there are frame-ups and biased investigations then children of migrant workers will never be encouraged to work hard and aspire for greater things. They will always believe that the American Dream is not for them but reserved only for those who have white skin. This resentment can boil over to anger and murderous rage. It can also be the root cause for the creation of criminal syndicates that will try to create a counterpoint to the corrupt practices seen in society.
Environmental Impact
One of the major root causes of environmental decline in major cities can be traced to urban sprawl. When LA experienced the full force of sprawling it did not take long before the residents felt the negative effects of modern living. In one explanation as to why this is happening one commentator said the following, “Sprawling development eats up farms, meadows, and forests, turning them into strip malls and subdivisions that serve cars better than people” (Gillman, 2002). It does not require the mind of a rocket scientist to understand the impact of the city without a diversity of flora and fauna. The stress levels are palpable as residents of LA can no longer reconnect with nature.
It is going to be a very difficult choice for policymakers. One has to choose between the environment and the necessary steps that are required to ensure that LA can compete globally and sustain its infrastructure as well as the other systems in place to make it into a global city. It is easy to understand why the environment is important but there are also other things to consider. For instance, in creating a global city there is a need for density and economies of scale (Newman, 2006). This simply means that subdivisions and high-rise condominiums, as well as office parks, will have to be constructed continuously to meet the requirements of the city.
Conclusion
Using the criteria proposed by Sassen, one can easily conclude that the city of Los Angeles, California is one legitimate global city. It is a command center where corporate leaders and financial advisers live and work and their combined expertise, as well as decision-making, can easily influence the global economy. It is a hub where they can offer technical expertise as well as innovative solutions to global problems.
But the global city of LA is also experiencing the negative consequences of being a global city and it is due to urban sprawl, racism, overpopulation, and environmental impact. It is inevitable for a city like LA to develop into a global city. The review of the literature reveals that the world needs global cities to have density and economies of scale that in turn will result in cost-efficiency but there is no justification for making the people who work hard to sustain this mega-city suffer high crime rates and other social problems.
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