Study On Globalizing Cities, A: Theoretical Frameworks And China's Modes

Theoretical Frameworks and China's Modes

Zhenhua Zhou

• Publisher: WCPC
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781938134371
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A Study on Globalizing Cities is the latest masterpiece by Zhou Zhenhua, a famous Chinese economist, who closely tracks the theoretical study of global cities and is actively engaged in the strategic research of Shanghai's development.

With rich empirical data and an in-depth analysis, this book is of great theoretical and practical significance. Different from studies on global cities by renowned western scholars, this book extends its perspective to globalizing cities. It explores a unique development model for China's globalizing cities by adopting a creative angle of observation and analytical methods. By criticizing that the traditional global city theory derives the logic relations of global cities directly from globalization, Mr Zhou puts forward the concept of globalization city, which is introduced as a new intermediate explanatory variable. More importantly, this book emphasizes that the building of global cities is not only dependent on the distribution of urban space and urban economic development but also on comprehensive construction of multiple structures and functions of cities.

Contents:

• Literature Review
• Globalization, Informatization, and the Change of the World City System
• Global City Networks and Their Nodes
• Regions of Global Cities: A New Spatial Structure
• Rise of Global Cities: Prerequisite and Positioning Strategic Target
• Path Dependence of Globalizing Cities
• Relations of Competition and Cooperation During the Rise of Global Cities
• Strategy Oriented by Flow Expansion and Its Development Mode
• Industrial Base of the Leading Service Economy
• Evolution of Spatial Structure of Globalizing Cities
• Creative Cities and Cultural Creativity
• Systemic Framework of City's Governing Structure

Readership: Undergraduates, graduates, academics, economists, urbanologists, sociologists, and municipal governors who are interested in globalization and China's urban development.

Chapter 1

Literature Review

The study on “globalizing cities” is indeed a new research topic, however, the phenomenon of a globalizing city is not a completely isolated one. Especially, it is closely linked to the concept of a “global city”. Theoretically, it refers to a further expansion and explication of the global city studies. Therefore, the theoretical source of studies on this issue is the global city theory, even urbanology. After the 1980s, several hypotheses, such as “world city”, “global city”, “global city-system”, and “global city-region” came into being in succession, and a series of empirical researches exploring the world city network relationships and countermeasures constructing modern international metropolises both provide the necessary theoretical preparation and analysis tools for research on the concept of a “globalizing city”.

1.1. Formation and Development of the Global City Theory

Studies assuming the city as a separate object has a long history, resulting in the formation of the offshoot research area of urbanology, with an independent system. After the 1980s, an increasing number of scholars began to pay attention to and focus on some special types of cities (e.g., global city), and started carrying out in-depth studies, forming various hypotheses that differed from that of traditional urbanology. At present, the study of the global city remains deep, continuously producing new theoretical results.

1.1.1. Traditional urban studies

In traditional urban theory, there exists a deep-rooted idea that cities are service centers of rural areas whose influences on urban theory are fundamental and very strong. Based on this concept, the traditional urbanologists commit themselves to the understanding and description of the urban spatial distribution. Among them are some representative theories such as Christaller (1996) and Lösch’s (1954) urban theory of “central location”, based on traditional agricultural areas; Burgess’ (1923) concentric pattern theory; Hoyt’s (1939) fan pattern theory; and Harris and Ullman’s (1945) multicore pattern theory. The core contents of these so-called classical urban development models are as follows: in the broader scale, between cities or regions, there is a relatively self-sufficient agricultural economic region, with the urban centers and its rural hinterlands exchanging goods and services; in the narrower scale of the inner city, there is a centralized urban area in which the Central Business District (CBD), as the dominant node, is connected with the suburbs by traditional radial public transport routes, with the suburbs relying on its services and providing labor force requirements (Hall, 1997).

Of course, there are different opinions about the understanding and interpretation of the system nature of spatial distribution of urban centers. For example, from the perspective of social organization, Chicago sociologists put forward very simplistic, superficial urban development patterns, that is, it is deemed that social organization comes from spatial competition, which leads to an “ecological classification” pattern associated with a bid-rent model (bid-rent). Since then, the traditional theoretical framework describing layouts of urban land use and land values centers on the concept of “the highest value and best use” and the methodology of bid–rent curve. The urban land use layout model develops simultaneously with a population distribution model. Among the different types of analysis, the most typical is to reveal that there exists “a crater-like density distribution area” around the CBD, the intersection of whose highest land value are probably those areas with most concentrated pedestrians and heaviest traffic.

Later, some studies try to adapt this standard “single center” model to the multicenter structures of many modern cities, which mushroom as a result of their suburbanizing activities. Hamilton assumes the “centrifugation-decentralization” model produced by the “mechanized transport and electricity distribution”, competing with the “centripetence-centralization” model explicated by economies of scale and economic integration. For example, factories moved to the suburbs, and urban areas that spread outward in both radial and frontal directions as a result of population diffusion mutually inosculated, often swallowing up previously existing centers of neighboring areas. Although these remote centers are swallowed into the cluster, they usually function as commercial sub-centers. In 1963, Berry also amended the “single nucleus” model in his paper on the US urban retail structure to distinguish between the ribbon development areas and sub-centers. Although these researches break through the limitations of the “single nucleus” model, their theoretical models are still built on a field with towns and their hinterlands relatively self-enclosed, tending to describe the layouts of urban space as an integrated economy and with a physical boundary, almost not paying attention to more complex and wider relations.

Therefore, in the traditional urban studies, there is an obvious feature, namely, that the analysis of urban problems, including the inter-city relations, is mostly limited within a country. The commonly used approach is to analyze the “national urban system”. In this analysis, the typical method is to select the unrelated data in the national census and classify cities by the size of the urban population, with such models as “law of the primacy city” and “city size class rule” often used to describe this “city hierarchy”. Of course, a few scholars are dedicated to the study of “port city”, investigating how goods flow toward cities around the world through these ports. However, this study is of little effect in the academic community and is enlisted by only a small number of scholars.

With increasing accretion of the impacts of economic globalization, some researchers began to notice its effect on urban development but did not cast off the shackles of the traditional framework of urban theory, so that it is deemed that all cities attach themselves to the single center location system (Chase-Dunn, 1985). In this case, at best, the connection between a city and its hinterland should be developed in a larger scale. Perhaps, the classical city center location system model can still reasonably explain regional, but not global, urbanization patterns very well. The theoretic framework of traditional urbanology is unable to contain the kind of broader, more complex relationships or contacts of the global range when cities exceeds their own hinterlands, so that those studies on the global city based on worldwide connections and inner-city relationships of the global range are excluded.

1.1.2. Early research and theoretical hypothesis formation of global city

As early as 1889, the German scholar Goethe used the term “world city” to describe Rome and Paris. In 1915, the British master of urban and regional planning, Geddes (1915) clearly put forward the concept of world cities in his book Cities in Evolution, where he defined them as cities that occupy a disproportionate scale in the business world and used, as examples, the commanding roles of national capitals (such as Paris, Berlin) and industrial centers (such as Düsseldorf, Chicago) in the business and transportation network to illustrate his theory. Hall (1966) used the two concepts of size and intensity to measure the function of cities and conducted a comprehensive study of seven cities: London, Paris, Randstad, Rhine-Ruhr, Moscow, New York, and Tokyo from the polity, trade and communication facilities, finance, culture, technology, higher education, and other aspects, assuming that the world city is basically the product of the single European system of industrial capitalist economy, which ranks at the top of the world city system.

After the 1960s, multinational companies increasingly became the main carriers of globalization, playing an important role in driving capital, technology, labor, and goods to flow among countries, and thereby attracting global researchers’ attention. Hymer (1972) introduced the multinational companies into the study of global cities with pioneering spirits. In his view, in the global economy with increasingly close contacts, the importance of corporate decision-making mechanism impels multinational companies to locate their headquarters in the world’s major cities such as New York, London, Paris, Bonn, and Tokyo. Therefore, the importance and status of these cities can be confirmed, and they can thereby be ranked by measuring the number of multinational headquarters hosted by them.

However, it was not until the early 1980s that the direct combining of urban studies with the world economy change began, along with large-scale studies of the global city. With the new international division of labor coming into being, the world urban distribution has undergone major changes. Many Western researchers find it increasingly complicated to observe changes, and it has become difficult to explain urban development and its changing function with respect to the traditional urban theory. When turning their attention to the deepening international economic exchanges, they found that economic globalization has led to the redivision of regional economic activity, further contributing to the new formation of urban form and function. Conhen (1981) is one of the scholars who earlier thought of the world city system in connection with the economic activities of transnational corporations, believing that the new international division of labor is an important bridge between the two, and the global city is seen as the coordination and control center of new international division of labor. Therefore, the main criteria to judge the countries of the world lie in their position and impact in the global economy. It is the study directly combining this process of urbanization with the world economic power that provides a theoretical framework for studying global cities, whose basic hypothesis is completed by Friedmann and Sassen.

Inspired by the new international division of labor studied by Frobel, Scott, and other researchers, Friedmann advanced the famous “world city hypothesis”. In 1981, he and Wolff published the paper “Notes on the World Urban Future”, beginning to show concern for the study of the world city. In 1982, he and Wolff published the paper in collaboration World City Formation: an Agenda for Research and Action, further exploring the formation of the world city. In 1986, he published the paper “World City Hypothesis”, presenting seven famous judgments, and further improving the study of the world city. This hypothesis attempts to provide the theoretical basis of spatial organization for the new areal division of international labor, emphatically revealing the structure of world city hierarchy and classifying the world cities. Friedmann’s world city hypothesis comes from non-empirical observations, but owns considerable rationality. His unique views of spatial structure and layout of world cities are generally accepted by the academic sector and recognized as the pioneering contents of the world city literature (Knox and Taylor, 1995). Although great progress in this research field has been made, his original theory in this field is still dominant and is the basic theory that explores the inner-city mutual relationships in the world (Hamnett, 1994).

Sassen (1991), a University of Chicago professor, studies the degree of internationalization and concentration and the intensity of major producer services of cities from the perspectives of the world economic system and explains global cities through the world’s leading producer services, thus making him a representative having a significant impact on the research field.

Different from Friedmann’s initial idea of seeing the world cities as general “command centers”, Sassen defines the global city as the financial and business services center, whose essence is to provide services for the global capital rather than specific local management, avoiding the kind of “centralized command” as something naturally possessed by the global city.

Sassen visualizes the global city as the birthplace of producer service industries of the times, which is considered as the key difference from Friedmann’s definition of the world city. With comparison to Friedmann studying the global city development from a macro point of view, Sassen more emphatically studies the global city from the micro perspective (enterprise location choice). With regard to the research method, Sassen’s study is based on empirical research, with a lot of empirical analysis being conducted on New York, London, Tokyo and other cities. Therefore, in fact, Sassen’s global city hypothesis is a kind of global city paradigm developed on the basis of empirical evidence of the USA (or New York/London/Tokyo). Because of her establishing theory and testing methods of the global city, the particular global city Sassen describes becomes the global city in a general sense.

There exist large differences but also considerable complementarities between the results of studies of Friedmann and Sassen on “world/global city”. Friedmann’s research has a global scope of vision but lacks adequate empirical experience; on the contrary, Sassen’s research is considered to have an overview on the evidence, but because it limits its studies to London, New York, and Tokyo, it is seen as lacking global inclusiveness (Taylor and Walker, 2001). Although there are various criticisms of the current “world/global city” assumptions, these theories boldly place the city under the perspective of the global hierarchy, in combination with globalization, and conduct a comprehensive re-examination of the city’s function, grade, society, and space, which, no doubt, provides the study a new perspective of seeing about the globalizing city as well as the global city.

1.1.3. Development of the global city theory

Friedmann and Sassen’s “world/global city” hypothesis caught scholars’ widespread attention but also brought in a variety of criticism. First, Friedmann’s hypothesis is mainly speculative and declarative, lacking information and database (Korff, 1987), and this defect has been widely mentioned (Short et al., 1996; Taylor, 1997, 1999). Of course, there are also objective reasons, e.g., only those data collected according to countries are available and there is a lack of multinational data. Second, this hypothesis pays more attention to high-level cities of the world city system. Friedmann (1995) put forward only 12 core and 18 semi-peripheral world cities, without more important cities included in the world city hierarchy. Of course, this also largely owes to the lack of adequate data. Furthermore, Friedmann first, as a whole, constructs the hierarchy of world cites with pioneering spirits, which is related to the construction of a domestic city hierarchy in the study of “national urban system”.¹ However, according to observations, even in a country, a mechanical simple hierarchical pattern does not exist (Pred, 1977). From the transnational point of view, a simple hierarchical pattern looks even more unreasonable (Taylor, 1997). Typically, the division of the city level is in accordance with the city’s “importance” or size, but no matter what standards are maintained, they do not suggest the formation of the hierarchy of world cites. Moreover, the definition of an urban hierarchy depends on not only the “importance” or the size and other factors but also “a series of factors” (Lukermann, 1966). Especially, with the rapid worldwide development of communication, simultaneously, there exist two trends: the centralized and decentralized in economic functions, which lead to the uncertainty of the world city hierarchy. It is in this academic criticism and debate that “the world/global city” hypothesis can be further developed, and the various theories and schools of the global city come into being, the relatively typical examples among which are as follows:

(1) Post-modernism Global City Research as Represented by Los Angeles School

According to this school of thought, the core of Friedmann and Sassen’s “world/global city” hypothesis is that economic globalization has the impact of these cities going beyond the nation-state, bringing their control functions into play at the global level, but, recent years’ research on global cities based on different politics, economy, cultures, and governance shows that the influences of state administration, culture, and history on these global cities are not necessarily similar to the hypothesis. Therefore, they argue that the Friedmann and Sassen’s “the world/global city” hypothesis is too dependent on the US urban context and the special nature of a few cities and therefore is not able to reflect the influences of different political backgrounds. There are also some critical scholars who think that Friedmann’s point of view is economic determinism. In their view, the internationalization of some cities is influenced by their identity as a country’s capital, for example, Washington, D.C., Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo (Hill and Kim, 2000).

The Los Angeles School takes the ideas of post-modernism, bringing the understanding of the world city back to the earlier broader definition by Hall. For example, Soja (1996) takes the political, historical, cultural, and social criticism, holding the view that the contemporary urbanization is a fully social process of globalization, with urbanization and global social changes concomitant and globalization-based, and that post-Fordist urbanization creates global cities such as Los Angeles. Scott and other researchers think Los...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Abstract
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Literature Review
• Chapter 2 Globalization, Informatization, and the Change of the World City System
• Chapter 3 Global City Networks and Their Nodes
• Chapter 4 Regions of Global Cities: A New Spatial Structure
• Chapter 5 Rise of Global Cities: Prerequisite and Positioning Strategic Target
• Chapter 6 Path Dependence of Globalizing Cities 167
• Chapter 7 Relations of Competition and Cooperation During the Rise of Global Cities
• Chapter 8 Strategy Oriented by Flow Expansion and Its Development Mode 235
• Chapter 9 Industrial Base of the Leading Service Economy
• Chapter 10 Evolution of Spatial Structure of Globalizing Cities
• Chapter 11 Creative Cities and Cultural Creativity
• Chapter 12 Systemic Framework of City’s Governing Structure
• Bibliography
• Postscript
• Index