National and Transnational Urban Systems

3 National and Transnational Urban Systems he trends described in Chapter 2 point to the emergence of a new kind of Turban system, one operating at the global and transnational regional levels (Marcotullio and Lo 2001; Taylor 2004; RPA 2007; Derudder et al. 2010; Xu and Yeh 2010; Fainstein and Campbell 2011; Mori Foundation 2011; Bridge and Watson 2011). This is a system in which cities are crucial nodes for the international coordination and servicing of firms, markets, and even whole economies that are increasingly transnational. This global urban map of the organizational side of the world economy needs to be distinguished from the far wider global map of the consumption of globally distributed goods and services; consumer outlets of global brands are more or less everywhere, but this does not mean that these places are part of the organizational map of the global economy. And it needs to be distinguished from the global map of foreign direct investment; the fact that several buildings in a city are foreign owned does not necessarily make it part of the organizational map of the global economy. First, the foreign direct investment and, especially, the consumption map are far wider and more diffuse than the organizational map; the latter is strategic and dominated by about seventy global cities in a world with millions of cities. Second, global cities also emerge as strategic places in an emergent transnational political and cultural geography. The number of global cities grew sharply during the 1990s because the global economy expanded vastly as more and more countries, often under pressure, adopted the deregulatory and 58 National and Transnational Urban Systems——59 privatizing policies required for joining the global corporate system. Many other processes—global culture, migrations, global civil society—were part of the making of some cities into global cities, as I discuss later in this chapter. Most cities, including most large cities, are not part of the new transnational urban systems. Typically, urban systems are coterminous with nation- states, and most cities exist within these national geographies. Correspondingly, studies of city systems in the 1980s and 1990s, when this new global phase was in full swing, generally took the nation-state as the unit of analysis. But there were important exceptions (Chase-Dunn 1984; Timberlake 1985; Savitch 1988; GaWC [Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network]; Sassen [1991] 2001; Santos et al. 1994). Although this is still the most common view, there is now a growing scholarship that allows for the pos- sibility that intercity networks can cross national borders directly, bypassing national states as these entities now have reduced gatekeeping functions. This chapter examines the impact of economic globalization on national urban systems in order to understand if the globalization of major industries, from auto manufacturing to finance, has had distinct effects on different types of national urban systems. I focus especially on balanced and primate urban systems, the two major types identified in urban research. Western European countries have typically been regarded as a good example of balanced urban systems and Latin American countries as a good example of primate systems— where much of a country’s population, jobs, and firms are concentrated in one city, typically the national capital. But we find this pattern also in developed economies, as exemplified with London and Tokyo. The second half of this chapter examines the emergence of transnational urban systems. Global Patterns of Urbanization Before entering into the detailed discussion of primate and balanced urban systems, focused on respectively Latin America and Europe, I briefly intro- duce some general growth trends for the world’s urban population and for Africa and Asia, two continents with some of the highest population growth rates. Since 1988, the United Nations’ Population Division has issued estimates and projections on the world’s urban population growth, on countries’ urbanization rates, and on cities’ size—three different measures.1 Some of the largest cities are in China and India, two countries with low urbanization rates, and some of the most urbanized countries have no megacities, for example, the Netherlands and Canada. Mexico is more urbanized than China, even though the latter has several megacities. 60——Cities in a World Economy Exhibits 3.1 and 3.2 point to a future leveling off in the rate of urban population growth, though not in its absolute numbers, and a decline in the global share of the rural population has slowed between 1970 and 2010, though in absolute numbers it only declined in the developed world (see Exhibit 3.4). The developed world had its highest urban population growth rates in the 1970s, a process that can combine multiple different urban trends; in the United States, for instance, it took the form of massive subur- banization, growth in smaller cities, and declines in some of the largest cities. In Japan, some of the highest growth rates in the urban population happened in its period of accelerated industrialization in the 1960s when up to 60% of the rural population moved and was moved to cities (the government moved whole villages to the cities, grandmothers and all). As this process proceeded, inevitably the rate of growth would decline and eventually level off, and in the future, the rate of growth may well become negative—that is, if signifi- cant numbers leave cities and suburbs to live in exurbs and rural areas. But a declining urban population does not preclude a mostly urban population. Exhibit 3.1 Average Annual Growth Rate for Urban Population, 1970–2010 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1970–1975 1975–1980 1980–1985 1985–1990 1990–1995 1995–2000 2000–2005 2005–2010 World More Developed Regions Less Developed Regions, excluding least developed countries Least developed countries Source: Compiled from data in Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat (2008). National and Transnational Urban Systems——61 Exhibit 3.2 Average Annual Growth Rate for Rural Population, 1970–2010 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 −0.5 −1 1970–1975 1975–1980 1980–1985 1985–1990 1990–1995 1995–2000 2000–2005 2005–2010 World More Developed Regions Less Developed Regions, excluding least developed countries Least developed countries Source: Compiled from data in Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat (2008). In the developing world, this leveling off in urban population growth rates coexists with estimated ongoing increases in the actual number of urban dwellers up to 2030, along with an increased share of national GDP concentrated in the major cities (see Exhibits 3.3 and 3.4; see also Exhibit A.3.5). Although cities and suburbs in Africa are continuing to grow, overall, the rate of growth is declining from 5% growth between 1960 and 1965 to 3% in 2005 through 2010 and a projected 2% in 2045 through 2050 (UN 2010). In Asia, which today has one of the fastest-growing urban populations in the world, the actual rate of growth is declining, from 3.9% in 1960 through 1965 to a projected nominal 1% for 2045 through 2050 (UN 2010). Multiple conditions are likely to be at work, and they are likely to vary greatly across continents and across countries. India’s unequal development and sharp inequality keep most of the poor in rural areas and villages—they are too poor even to migrate. China’s tens of millions of rural migrants working in 62——Cities in a World Economy cities and metro areas are actually counted as nonurban because a city residence permit is required to be a permanent resident, and most of these workers are on a temporary work permit. Generally, Asia and Africa are home to very large slums, and many of those urban residents are not included in official counts, though multiple estimates abound about their rapid growth rate. Finally, many of the large cities and increasingly some of the mid-sized cities are reaching the limits of their absorption capacity; this also happened earlier in Latin America, where Mexico City and Sao Paulo, among others, had been projected to reach thirty million residents by 1990 but in fact leveled off at about twenty million. It is clear that many parts of Asia are in desperate need of whole new cities. China is planning to build 100 new cities over the next few decades. But the massive costs of building new cities or significantly expanding existing cities, and the enormous planning and engineering challenges, make this an option only for some countries. What China can do, a country such as India, with its enormous concentrated wealth, cannot. India has the engineering talent and, in principle, the resources, but these are mostly and increasingly in private profit-seeking hands. Ineffectiveness and widespread corruption in the government are additional obstacles. The evidence suggests that for the hundreds of millions of poor in China, there is a bit of hope. But for those in India, there seems to be none. Brazil, without the resources and central planning powers of China, has done far more than India, through a simple government initia- tive: a flat grant to millions and millions of mostly urban poor families, which helped reduce poverty by thirty million people in only a few years. Nigeria’s government commands massive wealth (derived from oil reve- nues) but that wealth has only enriched a small elite and has been employed to build a luxurious new capital city with prices sufficiently high so as to keep out most Nigerians; the government has chosen not to invest in massive infrastructure to provide reliable electricity, water and housing to its people.

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