GECCON Module 6

• A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community's values and practices.
• Globalism


  A national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence, compared to imperialism and internationalism.
• A global citizen is someone who cares about others and the world they live in. They take action to support causes they believe in, and work with others to make a positive impact on their planet.
• A global citizen is one who:

  • respects and values diversity
  • knowledgeable of and works against social injustices
  • has an understanding of the world
  • participates in communities at all levels (from local to global)
  • takes responsibility for his/her actions and beliefs
  • aware of the world and has a sense of their role in it
• Such a definition of global citizenship is based on two assumptions which this article explores:

  • that there is such a thing as an emerging world community to which people can identify
  • that such a community has a nascent set of values and practices
• To be a global citizen you must…

  • Understand we were born of this world
  • Protect our country, the world, when called upon to do so
  • Stand up and defend against the injustices we see
  • Understand the interconnectedness
  • Respect and value diversity
  • Take action in meaningful ways
• Globality is the end-state of Globalization
• The term was used in 1998 by author and economist Daniel Yergin in a Newsweek article that described the end-state of the globalization process, and in his book, Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy.
• William Safire traces the etymology of ”globality” in his book No Uncertain Terms and identifies a range of citations as far back as 1942, when it was used as a synonym for “global”
• • Current use of "globality" as it applies to business — as a description of the current competitive state of world commerce - was not adopted until recently.
• The term has been described by William J. Holstein in the New York Times as "a new buzzword [that] doesn't work - it merely describes trends that have been under way for at least two decades under a very similar name."
• New global cities have since arisen not only as financial centers but also a producers of services that are global in scope
• • Global cities are post-industrial
  • Manufacturing has been scattered across national and global networks
  • Turn from "landscapes of production" to"landscapes of consumption"
  • Sociologist Saskia Sassen popularized this term.
  • Her The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1990) has shaped the concepts and methods used to analyze the role of cities and their networks in the contemporary world.
  • Sassen’s concept of Global City gives emphasis on the flow of information and capital
• Global Cities are major nodes in the interconnected systems of information and money, and the wealth that they capture is intimately related to the specialized businesses that facilitate those flows
• SEATS OF ECONOMIC POWER

  • New York have the largest stock market in the world
  • Tokyo houses the most number of corporate headquarters
  • Shanghai plays critical role in the global economic supply
• CENTERS OF AUTHORITY

  • Washington DC, not wealthy as New York, but it's the seat of American Power
  • Canberra is Australia political capital: home to country's politicians and bureaucrats
• CENTERS OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE

  • Cities that house major International Organizations: UN-New York, EU-Brussels
• CENTERS OF HIGHER LEARNING AND CULTURE

  The question then becomes how to identify these cities, and perhaps to determine to what extent they function as global cities specifically, beyond all of the other things that they do simply as cities.
• At Kearney's list, developed in conjunction with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Global Cities Index uses criteria across five dimensions:
• 1. Business Activity (headquarters, services firms, capital markets value, number of international conferences, value of goods through ports and airports)
• 2. Human Capital (size of foreign born population, quality of universities, number of international schools, international student population, number of residents with college degrees)
• 3. Information Exchange (accessibility of major TV news channels, Internet presence (basically number of search hits), number of international news bureaus, censorship, and broadband subscriber rate)
• 4. Cultural Experience (number of sporting event, museums, performing arts venues, culinary establishments, international visitors, and sister city relationships).
• 5. Political Engagement (number of embassies and consulates, think tanks, international organizations, political conferences)
• The Institute for Urban Strategies at The Mori Memorial Foundation in Tokyo published another study called "The Global Power City Index 2011." This report examined cities in terms of functions demanded by several "actor" types: Manager, Researcher, Artist, Visitor, and Resident.
• The functional areas were:

  1. Economy (Market Attractiveness, Economic Vitality, Business Environment, Regulations and Risk)
  2. Research and Development (Research Background, Readiness for Accepting and Supporting Researchers, Research Achievement)
  3. Cultural Interaction (Trendsetting Potential, Accommodation Environment, Resources of Attracting Visitors, Dining and Shopping, Volume of Interaction)
• 4. Livability (Working Environment, Cost of Living, Security and Safety, Life Support Functions)

  5. Environment (Ecology, Pollution, Natural Environment)

  6. Accessibility (International Transportation

  Infrastructure, Inner City Transportation Infrastructure)
• Another popular ranking is the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global City Competitiveness Index. They rank cities on a number of domains:
• 1. Economic Strength (Nominal GDP, per capita GDP, % of households with economic consumption > $14,000/yr, real GDP growth rate, regional market integration)
  2. Human Capital (population growth, working age population, entrepreneurship and risk taking mindset, quality of education, quality of healthcare, hiring of foreign nationals)
  3. Institutional Effectiveness (electoral process and pluralism, local government fiscal autonomy, taxation, rule of law, government effectiveness)
• CONCLUSIONS

  • Global Cities are material representation of Globalization
  • They are places that create the exciting fusion of culture and ideas which also generate tremendous wealth
  • Yet, they remain sites of great inequality, where global servants serve global entrepreneurs
  • The question of how globalization can be made more just is partly a question of how people make their cities more just.