Unemployment among young adult segment and expansion of economic disparities are becoming the significant issues that rock the societies all over the world.  If you take a look at the economic condition in the U.S., according to the statistics of the Department of Commerce of the US, there are 46 million population of poverty, which means one in seven people live in poverty.  In a reaction to this, people conducted protests and demonstration in New York, and this demonstration spilled over from New York to Washington D.C. as well as Los Angeles within one week.  Moreover, people urged to demonstrate through the Internet all over the world, and demonstration occurred in major city in the world such as London, Vancouver, Seoul, Taipei, Melbourne and Tokyo.  These series of demonstrations were reportedly reflected by the increase in frustration towards economic stagnation including huge income gap and high unemployment rates.  However, this doesn’t answer the fundamental problem behind the economic disparity.  You have to bring in the Saskia Sassen’s argument of the Global City.

In her famous book “Global Cities,” Sassen objectively analyzed the impacts of globalization towards cities and regions.  In her analysis, she argued that legal services, accountings, publications and so on are placed where highly-specialized service industries and finance industries are located.  One hand these industries are agglomerated in a handful of megacities such as New York, London, Tokyo (what she called the “Global Cities”).  On the other hand, existing manufacturing industries decayed and this accelerates bipolarization of the societies into high income class and low income class (bipolar development).  Formation of global cities helps grow the service industry where relatively rich people work, but this formation is accompanies by creation of low income class who work in labor intensive industries (other than manufacturing industries), who are mostly minorities, immigrants, day employees, and contingent workers, that supports the works and lives of rich people working in service industries.  The most critical point of her argument is that formation of global cities naturally creates the social stratifications

Of course economic stagnation is significant factor that drive people to conduct demonstrations, but I think Saskia Sassen’s argument tries to answer structural problem of economic disparities.  She analyzed the process of development of cities through globalization (effects of the globalization to cities and how cities react to the globalization) in a dynamic way.  In my analysis of worldwide demonstration, this mechanism argued by Sassen that creates social stratifications is fundamental problem that directly contribute the creation economic disparities, and other factors of economic stagnation drove people to conduct demonstrations.

by Hirokazu Takeuchi