What are global cities and what are their regional elements (example Tokyo)? Identife 4 models of sustainable urban development! What is meant by heterogenic and orthogenic roles of cities? What are the main aspects in the social relations and religion/culture metaphors?
Take-home exam:
Global cities MU 1625 – autumn 2010
Please answer only 3 of the 4 questions. You are free to choose which questions you want to answer.
Use approximately 1 (one) page for each answer. You are not allowed to have more than 1,5 pages per answer. Contact the course coordinator in case you have problems with the exam.
1. Global cities are also regional-cities in some dimensions. Define both types of cities. Looking at Tokyo, what are the “Global” elements and what are the “regional” ones? You get extra points in case you can discuss how, in the case of Tokyo, these elements relate to each other.
Answer:
The global city can be seen as a centre of functions and a centre of control in a world wide range acting on the level of a global market. Mainly the term global city is related to the functions of world economy and finances and connected to this the image as centre of investment and clout and tasks like management, coordination and dispersion. It is because of that a place attractive for the establishment of headquarters to spread information and products around the whole world and towards the national or regional level. Often global cities specialize in special functions. Global cities provide adequately different services and a network of infrastructure for their inhabitants and often attract people from all over the world to go there. But while thinking about the global city it should not be forgotten that it is not existing isolated but in both an international and a regional or national network system. Global cities from a national perspective coordinate also the economy of a nation or a region and link it to the global dimension.
The term regional city on the other hand underlines a cities importance for the local level of development, management and control in economy and politics. It is directly connected to the cities surroundings might it be other cities or rural areas. In a wider understanding of region it could also mean a cities importance for states located in one area of the world.
Focusing on Tokyo I am going first to outline the global elements. Obviously Tokyo is one of the worlds ruling financial centers and its stock market is commonly named with New York or London. In that way you can say that it is specialized in financial markets. Its metro- and train- and highway system as a part of the infrastructure is without question one of the most developed and optimized ones in the world. Tokyo as a global city is an international market for goods and services. At the same time it is as a regional city a national market in Japan. Besides is it Japans capital what leads to the linkage of the role as a regional city e.g. as place of the national and local government and in that way as place of control and management. Its suburbs like Yokohama or Saitama are million cities itself where many workers from Tokyo live. Without the special role of Tokyo as an engine of development the region around (maybe the whole country) would not have developed itself that much. On the other hand Tokyo could not be as prosperous without the workers and goods from the region around. In the wider sense of region Tokyo could not have developed into an industrial centre without raw materials like coal from China and could not transformed into a worlds finance centre today. Southeast Asia had on the other hand benefits of companies moving out of Tokyo and Japan to other countries in the Southeast Asian region because of the high property prizes compared to other states. Tokyo is a global and a regional city because of the fact that it is located in a special region and even when it became as important as it received the title global city without its regional background that would have been impossible. Both the global and the regional city Tokyo is based on network structures, is a centre of national and global control, management and economy and stimulates a global and a regional market. The functions stay the same but the dimension changes from a regional into a global
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- Citation du texte
- Antje Sigrid Kropf (Auteur), 2010, Global cities, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/264074
