Global Cities/World Cities

A Main theme from Niel Brenner's, Global cities, glocal states: Global City Formation...in Contemporary Europe.

Glocal is messy and contradictory- Who takes care of environment and at what scales?

Similar to Sister cities program, in NYS, a state-level Climate Smart Communities program lets decision makers commit to a pledge of reducing GHG and climate adaptation measures at the city level. Combining power and knowledge of climate action plans create a larger network for cities to collaborate and harness new initiatives on climate change adaptation and city resilience. I believe this is a step in the right direction because it starts a discussion among cities, creating a scalar effect which is similar to the rescaling from large national to supernational in capital investments or the reduction of global to local, the city level becomes a necessary heartbeat to reducing the scale and giving responsibility at the city level to build knowledge on climate change and establishing a normative approach to planning for mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Uneven Geographies of Capitalism

Main themes from Globalization and the Spatial Fix, by David Harvey

In an attempt to bridge spatial connections and economic theories of the Spatial Fix, I gleaned two main topics in relationship to landscape spatial formation:

1)      1)     Capitalism is territorial and requires resources. Spatial fix is a geographic restructuring and similar to capitalism, the fix is territorial.

Spatial connection:

Colonialism is a form of capitalistic venture; for example, the British Salt tax in India derived 10% of its revenue from its salt monopoly in 1850’s. The spatial fix in this comparison is territorial and truly a geographic restructuring of market seeking a new geography to exploit the natural resources of another country.

2)      2)     Securitization and relationship to financialization or the idea of capital mobility. Capital moves and in efforts for more mobility, reduction of friction occurs in bargaining or advantages for resources or infrastructure, which results in homogenization of spatial locale.

Spatial connection:

Similar to futures trading which anticipates trade and is based on the perception of money in the future, plans, designs or policy are future perceptions based on the belief that the outcome will be better or more profitable.

Urban Agglomeration

            Agglomeration is a loaded term I found out today in class. A rather simple definition on my Mac dashboard says, “[to] collect or form in to a mass group.”

As discussed in class the major theme that arose for me is the question of WHO?

Who collects? Who forms? Who is the mass group?

Across the readings of Harvey Molotch’s, “City as a Growth Machine,” to Philip McCann’s, “Spatial Distribution of Activities,” prescribed models of urban growth or agglomerations have perceived assumptions that these spatial groupings are believed to be the best economic output for growth of development. The collector and form-giver is designed by developers, planners and top-down decision makers but the mass group who is collected to live or work in these agglomerations have little or no participation in what their space and time will become.

Sudeshna Mitra, our instructor mentioned the concept of discretionary budgeting or giving the people power to vote in hopes of a more inclusive community. I believe this is an opportunity to involve people that would not normally have any representation in these processes. In the US, this is especially important now with the growing elderly population and their need to be represented in time, space and access to the environment for elderly living with disabilities.

Urban Questions & Epistemologies

Urban spatial form as we know it has changed and is ever-changing. Spaces and what we do with them dictate large spheres of urbanism: distribution of wealth, segregation of classes and neighborhood typologies. As evidenced by Engels, his method of analyzing urban spheres was through a derive, or a wandering observational method, detailing the city through his experience. We have evolved our methods of analysis by way of the Chicago School, the social sciences and even the natural sciences with climate-change modeling.

Although we have developed further techniques, it is noteworthy to discover one main point gleaned from the derive of Engels: Making the invisible visible, particularly poverty in cities. A question that arises is who is responsible for poverty? Historically, poverty was spatially spread out invisible within the landscape fabric, where the church and the landed elite provided services and economy for the poor. Within cities, this is not the case, people in poverty are wage-dependent on market forces, lacking any methods to produce their own wealth.

With local cooperation, the everyday landscape can become modes of production for food security- from community gardens to vertical gardens. Increasing access to our urban landscapes for all people is becoming increasingly important in regard to the urban imagination.