Читать книгу Global Political Cities - Kent E. Calder - Страница 42

Global cities have been among the most substantial beneficiaries of the complex sociopolitical transformations of the past four decades. In the wake of those momentous transformations, stretching in its latest incarnation from the 1970s through the past decade, civic leaders, the penumbras of power surrounding government, and grassroots activists all increased their influence on policymaking in various ways, creating the outlines of the global political city as we are now coming to see and experience. The key forces at work, and the institutions to which they are giving birth, are outlined schematically in figure 3-4.

As we have previously argued, global political cities have emerged through the sweeping, holistic, sociopolitical changes of the past four decades and encompass three dimensions: the ICT revolution, financial transformation, and the dramatic geopolitical upheavals of the post–Cold War decades. As summarized in figure 3-4, each of these three epic changes has significant sociopolitical consequences that have collectively fueled the rise of global political cities, and helped define their central institutions.

Figure 3-4. Sea Change: Catalyst for the Global Political City

Source: Author’s illustration.

The earliest and most fundamental driver has been technology—the ICT revolution, enabled by digitalization, which gained force during the early 1980s. This revolution has flattened social hierarchies and enhanced connectivity, as suggested in figure 3-4.

The ICT revolution serves as a force multiplier for cities in two ways. First, it has increased their return on investment: cities become capable of disrupting the world through innovations such as Uber, for example. Idea cities, such as San Francisco, thus gained greater influence, making them more significant on the world stage than they would otherwise be. Second, technological change also supercharged the innovation returns to density, due to the increasing complementarity between electronic and face-to-face communication.³⁷ Real-time electronic communication among established networks gained more importance when their trusted representatives could meet face-to-face.

The ICT revolution has also enabled sweeping financial transformation over the past three decades. The explosive growth of equity and related derivative markets, coupled with deepening global market integration and accommodating central bank monetary policies, has generated windfall profits for entrepreneurs and the financial world that have in turn supported all of the emerging institutions of the global political city, including local leaders, NGOs, lobbyists, and think tanks. Synergistic transformations in ICT and finance have been central to the flowering of global political cities throughout the world, by stimulating their information industries, their local economic base, and their role as both actor and platform for global agenda-setting.

Geopolitical change has also recently fueled the rise of global political cities. Most dramatically, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the waning of the Cold War diverted resources from defense and loosened constraints on transnational interaction, while shifting global agendas toward environmental and social-welfare concerns. These changes all benefited subnational actors, such as cities, at the expense of nation-state counterparts.

In the new world of flattened global hierarchies and deepened interdependence, propelled by the twin information and financial revolutions, urban authority and civil society are gaining influence as the nation-state stagnates or declines. A proliferation of influential nonnational actors is emerging. Some of them are IGOs engaged in global governance, development, and stabilization, such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and other UN-affiliated bodies. Others were NGOs, ranging from the World Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace, and Amnesty International to the Ford Foundation, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Club of Rome. The transnational connections of these extragovernmental bodies span the globe, intensifying at a very rapid rate, but with a major concentration in the global political cities of Europe and North America. By far the most intense concentration of transnational digital connections among NGOs is across the Atlantic.³⁸

Labor unions, multinational corporations, mass media, and education institutions have been active transnationally as well, with the nodes of their interaction rooted in global political cities. Washington, DC, among others, has importance for these pillars of civil society, as it has also for governmental actors. Although not formally concerned with governance or policy implementation, both NGOs and a variety of other transnational bodies have recently become increasingly active in global agenda-setting, with social media increasing their leverage and visibility. All these groups—both NGOs and at times IGOs as well—have engaged in fluid cooperation and competition across national boundaries and within specific global political cities. Collectively, they are a key dimension of the penumbras of power surrounding both national and local government—the key concern of chapter 5.

The new profile of interaction among these diverse international actors has been profoundly shaped by technology and supported by the revolutionary recent transformations in finance. It is heavily concentrated in large cities, exploiting their alluring power of proximity. Transactions also now tend to be distributed more flexibly among diverse organizations than heretofore. Public-private partnerships have become increasingly common and formed on an increasingly transnational basis, reflecting the deepening economic interdependence and generally relaxed geopolitical ties of the post–Cold War years.³⁹