by Mao Shibata

Many poor cities that distributed before have been changing greatly and they become global cities as well as New York, London, and Tokyo. According to Goldman and Longhofer, (2009, p33) “global or world citied are now believed to be key sites from which the global economy will derive its ingenuity and energy.” Although making global cities yield some profits, they also cause some serious problems for residents. In this report, I’d like to indicate what the issues of making global cities are and offer a direction to solve these issues.

Poor cities have grown into world cities rapidly since 1980s. As a result, it brings unequal society in many respects. For example, the infrastructure building promotes around the capital, while the rural area gets left behind in the urbanization and people depart from the countryside and overpopulate surrounding the metropolis so that the population density different from region to reason extremely. Moreover, rapidly economic growth causes acceleration in the inflation rate. In this goods inflation, people who earn enough money can afford to buy whatever they want, while people who have low income face in financial trouble. Accordingly, these differences widen the gap between the rich and the poor more and more. Due to a considerable gap between urbanized and deurbanized region in the global cities, it leads to social inequality.

As two authors said, world cities are key sites for the global economy and finance so that many companies in developed countries move into developing cities to produce more profits. It encourages growth of developing countries, on the other hand, it also endanger the residents’ daily life. First, because of increased urbanization, residents are seized their land. The residents especially farmers and the poor are deprived of their property to found airport, hotels, and recreation amenities for the rich or people in developed countries. They get kicked out of their land and force to live in informal place. Second, the poor’s lives become victim to meet the demand of developed countries. Since the supply of water and electric power that essential for people’s life has a chronic shortage and the infrastructure equipment is inadequacy, it leads to diarrhea and waterborne diseases. They are deprived of the right to live in safely and spend their lives with anxiety.

It is true that global cities are central importance in the world and they contribute to world economy, however, we merely focus on benefits of the global cities and put out these issues from our mind. We must know that there is unequal society and only so many people who live in metropolis or developed countries can reap a benefit while the poor suffer from their lives in countryside. We need to pay attention to country people’s live hoods and environment and we need to think about how to bring the unequal society back into balance.

Reference

Goldman, M. and Longhofer, W. (2009).”Making world cities.”Retrieved Oct. 21, 2012, from http://v1.lore.com/a#ir-ca201.moorehead-1