Global Cities Symposium: the Global City today.

This article is based upon the talk given at the Global Cities conference in Boston, Ma, in September 2002. It looks at how we measure cities and the impact of Asia-Pacific on urban change. What is the role of cities today and are urban regions consolidating? Environmental sustainability is increasingly important and relate to various scenarios for the future. However, the city, and its place in history, is as important today as it was 2000 years ago.

One image of the city of the future is one dominated by global brands such as McDonald's, Coca Cola, Starbucks Coffee, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. All the residents drive global brand cars such as Ford or General Motors or Nissan or BMW and fly to and from cities in global brand aircraft designed by Boeing or the Euro Airbus.

Such images replace those of the cold war years between 1950 and 1990; thousands of land tanks facing each other across Europe or Asia have been replaced by the image of an invasion of corporate capitalism in every country of the world.

MEASURING CITIES

The simplistic way to measure cities is by their population. However, this raises various issues, such as defining what is the boundary of a city. Table 1 lists an economist view of the largest cities in the world, but ignores the concept of city regions. Both London and Paris are part of city regions exceeding 20 million people.

What is noticeable from the above is that the ranking of quality of life, with Vancouver being the attractive city in terms of quality of life, does not appear in large cities. Is there is an inverse correlation; large cities are not necessary good places to live?

ASIA-PACIFIC AND URBAN CHANGE

During the 1980s and 1990s "the Asia Tigers" cities grew enormously in terms of population and wealth including Mumbai, Calcutta and Shanghai shown above. As a result of financial deregulation and globalisation, Asia-Pacific saw extraordinary economic growth which resulted in their property markets growing in parallel. In the mid 1990s this process came to a halt. Several countries experienced a property slump and currency devaluations plus a series of banking crises. As a result, property rents fell. As Table 2 shows, in real terms industrial rental values are today considerably lower than they were seven years ago.

Further analysis from the King Sturge Global Trends Survey (Table 3) shows major rental differences for both the office and industrial markets across the world.

As Tables 2 and 3 show, industrial property has fallen in value in the Asia-Pacific region; it is nowadays seven times more expensive to rent an industrial building in London (next to Heathrow Airport) compared with Shanghai. However, even within Europe there are one or two areas, such as Lille, where industrial rents are moderately low. Likewise, in the office market it is much cheaper to rent an office building in Kuala Lumpur than in the UK.

This analysis tells us two things; certain major financial cities such as London and Hong Kong can command enormous rents relative to other locations in the world. Secondly, the cost differentials of certain locations in Asia-Pacific make them the obvious location targets for low cost manufacturing facilities. Asia-Pacific is increasingly becoming the manufacturing zone of the global economy, with manufacturing employment downsizing in many North American and European countries.

This reasoning is reflected in the King Sturge analysis of global workplace locations (Figure 1).

As the chart shows, routine manufacturing can be in any part of the global economy where costs are cheap. There is no particular need for face to face interaction. Heavy manufacturing increasingly takes place in China and Asia-Pacific.

By contrast, complex face to face negotiations, often requiring legal documentation, needs to be done in major cities such as London and New York.

The development of software is another phenomenon of the global economy. This does not necessary require face to face contact, but requires "thinking" time.

This proximity-work function matrix helps us understand the role of different cities in different parts of the global economy.

CONSOLIDATION OR URBAN REGIONS

As a result of globalisation, and the strive for cost efficiency and greater productivity, certain city states are becoming more important. Increasingly, it is not countries but city regions which form the economic network of the global economy. As the earlier table demonstrated, Lille is far less important and commands much lower rents than Paris, despite both cities being in Northern France.

The take-up of office space in major cities including Paris in Europe (even during 2001) over the last four years has been much higher than in the early 1990s. As the following forecast table suggests (Table 4), this trend is likely to continue. Cities, not countries, and city regions will increasingly become the focus of economic activity as the global economy becomes increasingly dependent on the service sector.

The consolidation of cities, and the growth of the service sector at the expense of the manufacturing sector, will result in the greater need for not only office buildings, but also residential buildings and good transport systems. Indeed, the whole infrastructure of cities will need to be improved if this consolidation is to be successful. Such consolidation involves schools, hospitals, and leisure facilities. And linked to this consolidation is the need for industrial distribution facilities to support these mega city region complexes.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

The consolidation of cities leads on to one of the major challenges of the global economy, that of environmental sustainability.

A simple definition of environmental sustainability is that "a building must be capable of fulfilling today's needs without prejudicing future generations." This simple statement is easy to make but harder to justify It is clear today that global warming is an increasingly important issue. The following table demonstrates this trend. Temperature: Deviation from Average (Degree Celsius--Global) 1860 -0.4 1880 -0.2 1900 -0.2 1920 -0.3 1940 -0.05 1960 0.0 1980 0.0 2000 +0.4 Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

One of the causes of global warming is the increasing emissions of carbon dioxide. Although there are a number of gases which can be taken into account, the one which is increasingly important is carbon dioxide when considering the issue of environmental sustainability. Carbon Dioxide Year % Atmosphere 1900 0.028 2000 0.035 Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Some work undertaken at King Sturge, looking at the energy used by buildings, divides energy consumption to three elements; embodied energy used in constructing a building, energy in use day to day and energy used transporting employees to and from an office building. Energy and Offices: per person Kg CO2 per 10 [m.sup.2] over 20 years

Embodied In-Use Transport Total Air-Con out-of-town 10,000 40,000 14,112 64,112 Air-Con in-town 10,000 40,000 7,584 57,584 Old Non Air-Con in-town 2,000 14,000 7,584 23,584

As the table above shows, a new air-conditioned building in Northern Europe, outside the traditional town centre, relying on road transport is a gas guzzler. It generates a vast amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

By contrast, a non air-conditioned refurbished old building, in a town centre, generates less than half the carbon dioxide of a brand new out-of-town office building over a 20-year period.

It is this type of analysis which will be increasingly important to understand the future. Even so, increasing carbon dioxide will increase atmospheric water vapour, create greater climatic change and weather instability. This volatility and global warming impact will create more droughts and flooding (such as in Prague during 2002) and will result in sea levels rising as the polar ice caps melt. That will then lead to the following:

Flooding: High Risk Regions

Venice, Italy

Tokyo, Japan

South Texas, U.S.

Bangkok, Thailand

Abu Dhabi, UAE

Dubai, UAE

London, UK

Netherlands

New York, U.S.

Source: James Morrell "How to Forecast" 2001

It is interesting that certain cities which have grown enormously in recent years, either in terms of population or in terms of wealth, (or both) are also cities which are most vulnerable to changes in the global environment.

GLOBAL SCENARIOS AND CITIES IN HISTORY

International research undertaken by King Sturge in connection with the Dublin Institute of Technology suggests that there may be three ways of looking at the future, but each of these scenarios is over-written by the issue of environmental sustainability discussed above.

One scenario is that the world will become more unruly. The "Lords of Misrule" scenario suggests that, in 15 years time international terrorism and urban crime will both become far more important and more widespread than they are today. In parts of the world, such as Johannesburg or Moscow, urban crime is already a major problem.