1. Global Cities
Prof. Stephen Graham
Stephen Graham

2. Signs of an Urban Renaissance of Certain Cities Through
New Technology and the ‘New Global Economy’

3. Local Examples: Newcastle Technopolis

4. “Silicon Alley” Televillage (Pink Lane)

5. “Sunderland “Teleport” Doxford Park

6. A Paradox: Globalization Processes, and the Use of
New Transport and Digital Technologies, are Leading to
a Patchy ‘Urban Renaissance’ of Certain Cities and
Districts of Cities
• Paradox: distancetranscendence, ‘space-time
compression’ leading to a
growing salience of urban place
in economic location
• Cities linked into global network
of cities but on very different
terms

7. Cities Embedded in Stark Global
Divisions of Labour: Two Broad Positions -- “Sticky
Places” versus “Slippery Spaces”
• Stark geographical divisions of labour linking
urban sites intimately across the world
• Global network of cities
• New technologies of communications and
transport used to refine such divisions, not
overcome them
• Geographer Ann Markusen defines “Sticky
Places” (high-value added, ‘creative’ and
central locations) and “Slippery
Space” (peripheral locations where routinised
work and labour are located)

8. First, Markusen’s “Sticky Places”
• High value-added and creative
locations within or near core,
‘global’ cities
• Excellent transport and
telecoms connectivity provided
by market and infrastructure
advantages

9. • ‘Sticky place’ cities minimise
risks to major finance, legal,
headquarter and media/high
tech companies through
cutting-edge skills and highly
diverse labour markets
• ‘Soft’ social and cultural
services and ‘cool’ urban
ambience
• Sustain and support continuous
innovation and research and
development through intense
face to face and online contact

10. Loughborough University’s
Inventory of World Cities

11. ‘Alpha’ world cities like London
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Global stock exchanges
Banking and corporate headquarters
Fashion
Media, film, TV
Fashion
Non government organisations
International organisations/
governments
Huge centres of symbolic property
development, infrastructural
investments, main hubs of global
airline, port, rail, telecommunications
systems
Destinations of international migration
Locations for international events,
sporting events and conferences
Increasing sense of England being two
nations

12. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/223d9f04-2b26-11dc-85f9-000b5df10621.html#axzz1cjHpPT5T

13. Revitalised Urban Cores:
Highly Localised Geographies of ‘Dot.Com’ Activity
• Self sustaining cycles of
innovation, speculation,
venture capital, investment,
migration create boom cities
• Competitive advantage
overcomes high costs
• Gentrification and
“cappuccino urbanism”
leads to social exclusion
• New York case study in video
next session

14. New York’s “Silicon Alley”

15. ‘Technopoles’ on Peripheries of Global Cities
• Main high-tech and corporate
research and development
centres
• Campus style, suburban
environments
• Relate very closely with major
technology universities
• Highly dualised labour markets:
well rewarded technological
elites and often invisible support
workers

16. Silicon Valley is Archetype
• But technopole spaces actually
develop organically through
intense research and
development by entrepreneurs
and small firms
• Can boost dynamics once
underway
• But very difficult to engineer or
create through planning and
public policy alone, especially in
peripheral locations

17. UK “Knowledge Corridor” - Oxford-Cambridge

18. Second, and in contrast, “Slippery Space” Cities
Global peripheries in
global N and S: Areas of
low skills/wealth and/or
high un- and under
employment
• Ruthless cost-based
competition for
globalizing, routine
activities
*

19. • Call centres, logistics
hubs, free trade zones
for manufacturing and
assembly
• Supported through:
tax breaks, grants,
free land, property and
infrastructure
• Such investments
often intensely mobile.
Often not selfsustaining, fragile. and
require continuous
subsidy

20. Data Processing, ‘Back Offices’ and Call Centre
Parks
• Global North and South
competing with each other
• Global “off-shoring” going
on as mobile call centre
investment moves from low
cost regions in global north
to rapidly growing high-tech
cities in India, caribbean,
Africa e.g. Bangalore (top),
which are moving up the
value-added chain

21. • Global South
‘technopole’ cities have
highly fragmented
structures: export
processing and high
technology zones with
excellent infrastructural
connections elsewhere
separated off from
surrounding informal or
shanty settlements (which
are often demolished and
starved of investment and
infrastructure)
• (Right: Bangalore, India)

22. Must Remember, Most Global Cities in South are neither
‘Sticky Places’ Nor ‘Slippery Spaces”
These are ‘Ordinary’ Cities ‘Off the Map’
• Many large and fast-growing urban areas (especially
in global south) do not seem to have strong role
within formal, globalised, spatial division of labour at
all
• Subsistence and informal economies and settlements
and local markets
• Even many parts of cities with role in globalised
economy operate in the same ways
• Majority urban world: Must look beyond glitzy, iconic
‘global’ sites! Next: Chungking, China

24. But Even Here, Hidden,
‘Global’ Economic
Activities Exist
• Resource extraction,
mining, forestry, waste
recycling
• E.g. ‘E-Waste’ cities
around Guandong, China
• Where your VCR,
mobile, PCs, TVs etc.
end up!

25. Conclusions
• Cities are placed in very different positions in global
economy
• Embedded in stark geographical divisions of wealth,
power, technology and labour
• New technologies used to exploit those divisions, not
overcome them
• Power and wealth centre on the ‘sticky places’ which
orchestrate and organise global capitalism: ‘alpha’ and
‘beta’ ‘global cities’
• A second tier of cities has to fight to become ‘slippery
space’ by inducing in routine, low value-added and fragile
investments
• Many of world’s ‘ordinary’ cities can attain neither status

26. We should remember that divisions of wealth, power
and technology in a globalizing world are played out
within as well as between cities
And that these tend to be exacerbated by
globalization trends

27. Next Session Video Case Study:
The ‘Dot.Com’ Boom in the Pre-eminent
‘Sticky Place’ and ‘Alpha World City’ New
York City
3 Questions
• How has New York’s position as a high-tech global
city and ‘sticky place’ effected the social divisions
within the city
• What have been the roles of new technology in the
city’s renaissance and social conflicts over this
process?
• How have the processes of change depicted
shaped the geographies of Manhattan?