URBAN AND REGIONAL University of RESEARCH Michigan COLLABORATIVE Working Paper www.caup.umich.edu/workingpapers Series URRC 03-08 The Enduring Importance of National Capital Cities in the Global Era 2003 Scott Campbell Urban and Regional Planning Program College of Architecture and Urban Planning University of Michigan 2000 Bonisteel Blvd. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2069
[email protected] Abstract: This paper reports on the early results of a longer comparative project on capital cities. Specifically, it examines the changing role of national capital cities in this apparent global era. Globalization theory suggests that threats to the monopoly power of nation-states and the rise of a transnational network of global economic cities are challenging the traditional centrality of national capital cities. Indeed, both the changing status of nation-states and the restructuring world economy will reshuffle the current hierarchy of world cities, shift the balance of public and private power in capitals, and alter the current dominance of capitals as the commercial and governmental gateway between domestic and international spheres. However, claims in globalization theory that a new transnational system of global cities will make national boundaries, national governments and national capitals superfluous, albeit theoretically provocative, are arguably both ahistorical and improvident. Though one does see the spatial division of political and economic labor in some modern countries, especially in federations (e.g., Washington-New York; Ottawa-Toronto; Canberra-Sydney; Brasilia-Sao Paolo), the more common pattern is still the co- location of government and commerce (e.g., London, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Cairo). The emergence of global cities is intricately tied to the rise of nation-states -- and thus to the capital cities that govern them.