SMART DECLINE

Vs

SMART MOVE

The story about Detroit’s economic decline and Shrinkage was raised by ‘Alex Altman’ the Washington correspondent for ‘TIME’.  Altman is the one who predicted the GM failure in 2008 (years before happening) by his famous article “Corporate Layoffs: The Worst is yet to come”.

In 2009 he had more to say;  

He raised the idea of city shrinkage phenomenon in Detroit. The article named “Detroit tries to get on a road to renewal” and tailed by a photo of Detroit’s suburb. This photo later became an iconic portrait of the “Depopulation Phenomenon” in the States.  

The idea, was followed by many scholars in different routes; urban spatial, economics, social justice, or even politics.

To Paul Krugman, the Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University, urban reduction is not a matter of “Decline”, yet, he translates the idea of city shrinkage into ‘Smart Move’. He says, ideas move, then money moves, then people.   

 

Just drawing a comparison between the size of the US Auto industry between ‘1900-1970’ and the same thing in ‘2010’ will clearly depict the idea behind the city shrinkage. The U.S. main goal is changed. Providing “know-What” in early 20^th century brought a huge amount of financial resources. However, in past years, many booming economics such as India, China or even Brazil, relied on their cheap labor force and made the competition hard for U.S.

Consequently, U.S shifted its industry to “know-how”.

Rather than providing goods, they are more interested to provide the knowledge of production. A great example would be Silicon Valley in San Jose, CA (or Austin, TX). Inevitably, there was a shift in labor-based industries since the hub of production was not any longer in the US. Instead, the e-hubs are defined, hosted and boomed in many parts of the Stases.

I did a small experimental research as follows that I believe could be interesting;

 The price quote of 20ft U-Haul rental truck from Detroit to Austin and the same thing in opposite direction are questioned.

Both items have the same millage, the same criteria and the same nodes, but in different directions. The price from Detroit to Austin is 1600 $ and the opposite direction is 450 $. It shows the economic shift from manufacture-based industries to e-based sections.

In short, the city shrinkage phenomenon has no correlation with financial crisis, ethics, equity, or even social justice.  It is just a matter of movement. Rusk the author of “Cities without Suburbs” argues “When a city stops growing, it starts shrinking; there is no zero growth rate”. Hence, by moving the ideas, money and population also move.

Endnotes;

-       http://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=719454

-       Altman, A. 2009. Detroit tries to get on a road to renewal

-       Hall, Peter. 1997. Modeling the post-industrial city

-       Harvey, D. 1996. Justice, nature and the geography of difference. London: Blackwell.

-       Hollander, J. 2009.Polluted and dangerous: America’s worst abandoned properties and what can

be done about them. Burlington

-       Hollander, J., and F. Popper. 2007. Planning practice and the shrinking city

-       Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass frontier: the suburbanization of the United States.

-       Mayer, H., and M. Greenberg. 2001. Coming back from economic despair: Case studies

of small and medium-size American places

-       Mouffe, C. 1996. Democracy, power and the ‘‘political’’. In Democracy and difference:

Contesting the boundaries of the political

-       Popper, D.E., and F.J. Popper. 2002. Small can be beautiful

-       Safford, Sean. 2009.Why the Garden Club couldn’t Save Youngstown

-       Sandercock, L. 1998. Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for multicultural cities.

-       Shrinking cities? A comparison of recent planning exercises in Sudbury

-       Schulman, Bruce, J. 1994. From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt

-       Capitalism, socialism and democracy. New York: Harper.

-       Vergara, C.J. 1995. The new American ghetto. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

-       Wiechmann, T. 2008. Errors expected – aligning urban strategy with demographic uncertainty

in shrinking cities. International Planning Studies

-       Wolin, S. 1996. Fugitive democracy. In Democracy and difference

-       http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/04/what-cities-looking-shrink-can-learn-new-orleans/1685/

-       http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2009/04/25/192684/city-shrinkage/?mobile=nc

-       http://www.shrinkingcities.eu/index.php?id=73

-       http://www.eukn.org/E_library/Urban_Environment/Land_Use/Urban_Sprawl/Impoverished_facilities_in_shrinking_cities_have_implications_for_social_cohesion

The first attempt to define, categorize and rank global cities using relational data was made in 1998 by Jon Beaverstock, who worked at the time at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom (Jonathan V. Bea Verstock is now working in University of Nottingham). He started the ‘Global City’ phrase by the “Revisiting High-Waged Labor Market Demand in the Global City: British Professional and Managerial Workers in New York City” and continued that by establishing the ‘Globalization and World Cities Research Network’. The Globalization and World Cities Research Network, commonly abbreviated to ‘GaWC’, is a think tank based in the Geography department at Loughborough University in England, that studies the relationships between world cities in the context of globalization.

A roster of world cities was outlined in the GaWC Research Bulletin 5 for the first time and ranked cities based on their connectivity through four "advanced producer services": accountancy, advertising, banking/finance, and law. (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb5.html)

The following is a general guide to the rankings;

·         Alpha++ cities are New York City and London, which are vastly more integrated with the global economy than any other cities.

·         Alpha+ cities complement London and New York by filling advanced service niches for the global economy.

·         Alpha & Alpha- cities are cities that link major economic regions into the world economy.

·         Beta level cities are cities that link moderate economic regions into the world economy.

·         Gamma level cities are cities that link smaller economic regions into the world economy.

·         Sufficiency level cities are cities that have a sufficient degree of services so as to not be obviously dependent on world cities.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2010t2.html

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For the first time ‘Global City’ was imagined in ‘Metropolis’. ‘Metropolis’ is a 1927 German expressionist silent science-fiction film directed by Fritz Lang. The film was written by Lang and his wife Thea Von Harbou. Lang who was known as a master of German Expressionism divided the population into two distinct and separate classes—the thinkers and the workers.

“In late 2026, in a dystopian society called Metropolis, wealthy industrialists rule from vast tower complexes, oppressing the workers who live in the depths in the underground worker's city complex beneath them and …..”

Worth to see; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebejt0Pja8c

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Endnotes

o   http://www.demographia.com/db-megacity.pdf

o    "Glossary defining homelessness". Homeless.org.au. Retrieved 2010-09-01.

o   What is Sprawl?. SprawlCity.org. Retrieved on 2008-02-07.

o   Benjamin Grant (June 17, 2003). Urban gentrification is associated with movement "PBS Documentaries with a point of view: What is Gentrification?". Public Broadcasting Service.

o    World coal consumption 1980-2006 October 2008 EIA statisticsEIA, World Energy Projections Plus (2009)

o   "U.S. Coal Supply and Demand". Eia.doe.gov. Retrieved 2010-09-01.

o   Sharp, Michael D. (2005). Popular Contemporary Writers. Marshall Cavendish. ISBN 0-7614-7601-6.

o   Powell, Vincent (2005). The Legal Companion. Robson. p. 54. ISBN 1-86105-838-1.

o   Namu, Adilifu (2008). Black space: imagining race in science fiction film. University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-71745-8.

o    Westfahl, Gary (2005). The Greenwood encyclopedia of science fiction and fantasy: themes, works, and wonders.

o   Metropolitan area definition in the United States. Urban Geography

o   Regionalism’ in the USA: a critical overview

o    Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local. Guilford Press, New York.

o   Metropolis. Settlement Transition in Asia. In University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.

THE CORRELATION!

Economy, Politics or Economy-Politics

There is a game; on one hand, you have an opportunity to globalize the economy (Think about Hong Kong or Swiss) and on the other hand, you implement an economic dogmatic approach like Cuba or Iran (or an old example of Soviet Union).  The question is if the globalization does help nations, and if all know that, why still some nations are deprived of that.

Dogma is the official system of belief or doctrine held by a religion; Yet it introduce in economy by Peter Gordon. (http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~pgordon/index.php)

Nowadays, almost all economists are agreed that globalization is happening; an attempt to abolish barriers, not just in economy, but also in politic.  

This term is new and in Northern America is mostly comes with WTO or NAFTA. The question is;

How globalization is getting control?

How countries control global economy?

How small economies influence the larger countries?

How cartels are involved and with what degree of influence?

And more importantly

Who control who?

Are all the nations are taking advantages of globalization or some nations hurt?

What is the turnover of current global economy?

How globalization is getting support?

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF POLITICS IN GLOBALIZATION?

What is the “Economic Backwardness” in political perspective?

Economy is the part of the politics, inevitably the main part. Nations’ economic horizons get changed by political priorities in most of the times (though, I can bring an example like China that is totally reverse. They do organize their international relationship with other countries with respect to the possibility of taking economic advantages. China does use the power of Veto on the United Nations Security Council against US or England, just for the economic reasons, not because of the difference in political point of views. They ignored many sanctions activities against Syria or Libya, since they believe that trade with the isolated countries are much more convenient (and also beneficial) than doing the same with the WTO members). In other words, economy is serving politics. The other example could be OPEC.

OPEC is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Probably, the most influential economic cartel in the world.

OPEC decides about the price of the 68%of world’s energy (http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/data_graphs/330.htm). Though, most of the decisions are coming from the countries that are not producers, yet are consumers. Here, we can see how developed countries (mostly, Western countries) dominate OPEC’s decision and how politics controls economics.

Conclusion; globalization exists. No Doubt. Countries do take advantages of that, but not all of them. Since, the amount of economic resources is limited; there is no chance to have positive affects everywhere. The positive side of the globalization belongs to countries with stronger participation with Western countries (and recently China/Russia) and the negative impacts go through the countries with isolated political systems (such as North Korea, Iran, and Syria). In other words, globalization does not general more monetary resources. It just shifts available resources from a point to other point.

The law of conservation of monetary resources looks like the law of conservation of energy, first formulated in the nineteenth century, is a law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy/money in an isolated system/world remains constant over time.

                  

Endnotes:

-          Marshall, Alfred. (1890) Principles of Economics.

-          Drazen, Allan (2008). "Political business cycles," 

-           Rose, N. L. (2001). "Regulation, Political Economy of

-           McCoy, Drew R. "The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America",

-          Lohmann, Susanne (2008). "rational choice and political science,"

-          Acemoğlu, Daron, and James A. Robinson (2006). "Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective

-          http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED409816&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED409816

-          http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=RoePU0zM7t4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR13&dq=economy+globalization+politics&ots=PGE4b58Hyv&sig=d4z1X-iktoKjp7TcG0sd1j2cZx4#v=onepage&q=economy%20globalization%20politics&f=false

-          http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3175354

-          http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649880120050165

-          http://www.lavoisier.fr/livre/notice.asp?ouvrage=2565948