Download Carolyn Kimmick Data Project for Global Cities Part One: See Excel

Carolyn Kimmick
Data Project for Global Cities
Part One: See Excel Spreadsheet
Alpha ++
New York
Alpha +
Shanghai
Alpha
Sao Paulo
Toronto
Alpha Jakarta
Barcelona
Beta +
Lisbon
BetaLagos
Gamma
Guadalajara
Gamma Accra
Part Two:
As you can see from above, the cities I choose happen to be in a wide variety of
city ratings ranging from Alpha++ to Gamma-. There were a couple interesting
comparisons in the Habitat textbook that caught my attention about the relationship
between New York and Sao Paulo. On page 18 of the Habitat textbook there is a graph
that shows “cities with very strong prosperity factors” (Habitat, 18). Although the equity
factor jumped around for all of the cities listed on this page, like they did in my chart, I
was surprised to see New York as such an outlier in comparison to the cities listed in the
textbook since they are similar city ratings, and all in the Alpha category. On page 19,
Sao Paulo shows a larger inequality rating than the other comparable as well. I have
studied Sao Paulo a bit, and am from New York, but never realized the similarities in
equity of these two cities. I was aware of the cultural and social inequalities in Sao Paulo,
and have just begun to realize them in New York. Also, comparing the GDP per capita of
Sao Paulo and New York was thought provoking since that metric is so disparate. Sao
Paulo’s GDP per capita is $19,507, about four times lower than that of New York, at
$73,306.
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Part Three:
In the chart, I noticed that Barcelona, Lisbon, New York and Toronto had the four
highest levels of productivity also had the highest levels of infrastructure, quality of life
and environmental sustainability. These cities moved around slightly in each of these
categories, but they stayed consistently in the top five. I was surprised by the movement
of Shanghai in the category of environmental sustainability being second of the ten cities
to have the highest score, however it was in the bottom four for infrastructure. I would
have assumed that having a good infrastructure would result in having a good rating for
environmental sustainability, but in Shanghai’s case, that doesn’t seem to match. I would
expect that because a more efficient and advanced infrastructure, would logically suggest
a higher environmental sustainability rating. In the other cities, I had noticed that
normally if the infrastructure score was high, their environmental sustainability score was
also high. The fifth category however, equity of the city, had no correlation with the other
categories.
Income equity is not predictive of high scores in the other areas for the cities. And
that is true for both rich and poor cities. In looking at equity I looked specifically into the
similarities between Sao Paulo and New York to see if there was anything that allowed
me to better understand why they were similar with the knowledge I obtained about
GDP/capita and ranging metro areas above. The Habitat textbook states, “In the USA,
New York City contributes about 10 per cent of the country’s GDP and only 6.3 per cent
of the total population…Sao Paulo, Brazil’s economic and financial capital, accounts for
10 percent of the population, but 25 per cent of the national GDP.” (Habitat, 45) So high
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GDP per capita does not necessarily suggest income equity but rather speaks to the
greater level of wealth attainment over all.
One of the figures in the Habitat textbook was particularly interesting to me,
“Figure 2.1.3 shows that in the USA, urbanization rates and per capita income moved
together until roughly 1940, when urbanization reached close to 60 per cent… Brazil, a
higher middle-income country, underwent a seemingly similar growth-urbanization path
until the 1960’s, when about half the population became urban” (Habitat, 44). When
looking at urbanization of New York and Sao Paulo, you see that they are the top two
cities for most urbanized places out of the ten cities I chose. You can also see that there is
only a difference of 4.2 in the level of urbanization between New York and Sao Paulo.
Perhaps the level or urbanization can tell us more about the level of inequality than the
level of productivity in any given city. Perhaps as cities become more urbanized, the
equity between individuals decreases.
From this exercise I learned that the most productive cities, with the best
infrastructure, highest quality of life, and highest level of urbanization (yet lowest growth
rates) aren’t necessarily the most equal. For example, Toronto is the seventh lowest in
equity, but it has the best quality of life of the ten cities I chose. Toronto also happens to
be in the top three for each of the categories of productivity, infrastructure and level of
urbanization. The majority of my cities were more urbanized than equal with a few
exceptions in both the alpha and beta city range.
Interestingly, the cities that experience high levels of productivity experience low
population growth rates, this is typical because usually cities in first world countries have
lower population growth rates. The United States population growth is low which is
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typical of the first world countries, and you see that mirrored in the growth rate of New
York City. This was originally surprising to me because I thought that there would be
more draw or growth in developed cities with high productivity rather than in cities with
low productivity.
Measuring a global city may be worthwhile to try to put things into categories,
something that humans have known to be good at, but in doing so we are simultaneously
creating barriers and excluding other cities. Especially cities in the global south that
should, in my opinion be considered “global,” like many of the cities in Brazil, especially
after its hosting of the Olympics.
Where the controversy begins is the line of separation that makes the global south
not applicable due to financial means. Brazil’s cities are particular examples where
globalization has played a tremendous role. In this case, I believe that Friedman (and
Sassen and many other writers we have read…) hypothesis is very limited, especially
looking at the structures of New York and Sao Paulo, as well as traveling to the various
cities I have recently been to in Latin America.
Globalization is constantly infiltrating countries, and their core cities, as well as
the smaller peripheral cities that get this “residual globalization,” are in politically,
socially and economically being effected. By placing specific “regulations” and “rules” in
defining what a global city is, grossly oversimplifies what is occurring in the world today.
In reality, I believe that every city can be named a global city because as I said in my fifth
reaction paper, if they aren’t holding capital or being extremely infiltrated by globalizing
powers, they are at least getting “residual globalization” from the surrounding countries
or cities (if not in form of capital, in form of environmental issues that they must fix.)
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