Global Cities are Coastal Cities Too: Significance & Implications

 

 By

 

 

Professor, Organization & Policy

Global Studies Fellow

San Jose State University

San Jose, CA, 95192-0070

Email: Boschken_h@cob.sjsu.edu

 

  

A Paper Presented at the Inaugural Coastal Cities Summit: Values and Vulnerabilities, St. Petersburg, FL, USA, November 17-20, 2008. Copyright, 2008. All rights reserved.
“GLOBAL CITIES ARE COASTAL CITIES TOO:

SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPLICATIONS”

 

 

 

Most coastal cities are not global cities, but nearly all global cities are coastal cities. Coastal cities are known for both their unique mix of natural resources and their proximity to the open sea. Global cities are known for their centrality in the world economy and culture. Whether one is talking about the metropolitan areas of Hong Kong or New York, London or Los Angeles, most global cities have the distinction of harboring major international airports and foreign-trade seaports. In addition, global cities also serve as command and control centers for managing world commerce, as the nexus of multi-cultural immersion, as major centers for research, and as world stages for entertainment. Hence, these cities hold the dual distinction of being at the top of the global “food chain” and of being located in delicate coastal ecosystems subject to intense human population pressures. Although the majority of humanity chooses to live in coastal regions because of their rich and complex resources and in global cities because of the robust employment and lifestyle opportunities, the two criteria (coastal and global) do not always mix well in producing sustainable outcomes. This paper focuses on the public policy challenges of managing the coastal city as a center of global activities driven by foreign trade through urban seaports and the accelerated activity levels of a global professional managerial class.

 

“GLOBAL CITIES ARE COASTAL CITIES TOO:

SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPLICATIONS”

 

In the United States, only a few coastal cities are global cities, but virtually all global cities are coastal cities. This may be due in part to historical circumstance. For, example, most eastern global cities of the present can trace their origins to the colonization period where they emerged as mercantile centers of wealth and power and as transshipment points in a far reaching web of maritime trading routes. The same can be said for certain west coast cities during the westward expansion. Even though much has happened in the last 150 years that weakens the maritime connection to urban development, most of the power and socioeconomic complexity acquired in those earlier periods gave these cities enduring advantages over great but newer cities that had no maritime connection. Coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles are frequently distinguished as more central world cities than interior cities such as Denver and Dallas.

Beyond their historical origins, such world cities exist today with a profound sense of duality. As coastal cities, they are known for the beauty of their coastal resources and their proximity and access to the open sea. The bays, wetlands and shorelines draw people to observe what happens when the sea meets the land. Beside the obvious human activities of urban life, the city is overlaid on a “coastal zone” viewed by biologists as the nursery of life for as much as 90 percent of land and marine organisms.

As global cities, they are known for their inspiring built environments where art meets function and for their centrality in the world economy. Most are distinguished as global “gateways” harboring major airports and “load-center” seaports. Global cities also serve as command and control centers for managing world commerce, as the nexus of multi-cultural immersion, as major centers for research and as world stages for art and entertainment. Hence, these cities hold the dual distinction of being at the top of the global urban hierarchy and of being located in delicate coastal ecosystems subject to intense human population pressures.

Although much of U.S. population chooses to live in coastal regions because of their rich and complex resources, and in global cities because of the robust employment and lifestyle opportunities, the duality does not always mix well in producing sustainable outcomes. Although recognizing that coastal cities clearly make up a mixed category, this paper concentrates on the public policy challenge of managing the coastal city as a global gateway. It specifically examines American seaports in a shifting global economy and socioeconomic lifestyles based on mobility as having potential consequences on urban activity, development and environmental quality in the coastal zone.

 

What is a “Global City”?

 

Since Hall’s brilliant treatise (1966), the term “global city” has come to connote what nearly everyone refers to as a unique urban habitat acting as a portal and stage for world connectivity. It bestows an image that is contemporary, international, multi-cultural, “wired,” cosmopolitan, congested, polarizing and commanding geographically-boundless spheres of influence. However, until recent work by Boschken (2008), the term has not been widely understood as a collective vision that empirically sets apart the global city as a complex system for analyzing policy issues related to it. With a focus principally on the American experience, the work addressed the shortcoming by developing a multiple-perspectives approach using the lens of developmental policy theory. It found the global city to be a reflection of historical stages that evolved through interdependencies between globalization pressures and intra-urban developmental initiative.

In search of a collective understanding of the multi-dimensional global city, history informs us that the last half of the 20^th century revealed a vastly changed world order based on a contemporary form of globalization. Characterizing this post-WWII reordering as a developmental experience within the city, Clark (2004, p.293) says contemporary globalization appears to have been a cumulative process involving a three-stage, partly-overlapping sequence of economic, sociological and political transformations. Moreover, as world leader of many new trends during this period, the U.S. appeared to represent the focal point of these global transformations. The developmental impacts of evolutionary globalization on the American urban setting become more apparent upon closer examination.

 Probably ignited by post-war reconstruction economics, the first stage of transformation involved a geographic separation of goods-production from locations of product-consumption. Although self-contained regional economies (containing both producers and consumers of a product) had diminished in importance in the U.S. and elsewhere by mid-20^th Century, the separation of production and consumption had taken on immense international proportions (especially since 1960) with the emergence of “offshore” sourcing of goods and the creation of global markets. Through a highly competitive system of remote multinational production sites controlled and coordinated by a new fiscal and logistical command structure, this economic stage originally appeared as a concentration of demand on American soil offset by a global dispersion of supply (albeit skewed to the Pacific Rim).

Based on a premise that products could be made anywhere in the world without significant regard for per-unit transportation costs, it was a stage underscored by a massive shift toward international trade flows made possible by an American-invented “container revolution” in global shipping (Boschken, 1988; Boschken, 1998). It was also underscored by the concentration in strategic cities of production-service firms needed to control the logistics of these flows from and among dispersed manufacturing sites to markets mostly in the U.S. and Europe (Sassen, 2001; Thrift, 1994; Friedmann, 1986).

Because of globalization’s initial dependency on the economics of maritime trade, it was probably this first stage that solidified the positioning of the global city as a coastal city. Nevertheless, the economic stage eventually yielded some of its visibility to a second transformation sparked by a revolution in information and media technologies. It materialized in the rise of a symbols-driven cosmopolitan consumption, which concentrated on urban entertainment venues and post-modern interest in cultural immersion (especially since 1980). The “global lifestyle” had arrived and brought with it mushrooming demand for culturally-significant goods from all over the world and a host of “quality-of-life” urban services, as well as the free movement of foreigners, information and ethnic lifestyles across national borders (Clark, 2001).

Media-driven celebrations and focus on internet applications, consumption of wares at international festivals, appreciation for ethnic foods and gourmet restaurant districts, and the presentation of “world-event” theatrical performances, music concerts and art exhibits became standard preoccupations of many Americans (Clark, 2004; Short, Kim and Wells, 1996). So also did “buying trips” by global-aspiring folks to such prominent destinations as New York, London, Paris, Rome, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore, where at least a portion of the motive is cultural immersion.

Arguing that “amenities are critical for most urban processes,” Clark emphasizes “this is news since most past theories [of developmental policy] stress work and markets, rather than consumption and amenities (non-market factors)” (2002, p. 1). Although a coastal setting may not be essential to the character of this stage, the establishment of global cities in coastal zones during the first stage probably added important momentum to defining the global lifestyle with a coastal feel.

More recently, these two stages appear to have given ground to a third involving a realignment of urban politics (especially since 1990), said to be founded on a “new political culture” of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism (Clark and Hoffman-Martinot, 1998). Being especially evident in a few select cities, politically-important constituencies hold heightened aspirations for world-class status for their urban habitat that bestows membership in a global interaction spanning traditional political boundaries.

Being economically conservative, this political culture tends to promote public policymaking priorities. It tends to favor “productive” developmental expenditures driven by the global forces of consumption and it tends to de-emphasize traditional welfare programs that might otherwise sustain blight and perpetuate the dysfunctional lifestyles of an urban underclass (Abu-Lughod, 1999; McKenzie, 2001). Moreover, the realignment of priorities is accompanied by decline of hierarchical political organizations, traditional bureaucracies and clientelism (Clark and Hoffmann-Martinot, 1998; Hawes, 2000; Bishop, 2000; Thrift, 1994).

In this spirit of economic development, political support is often thrown to public-private partnerships that plan and carve out post-industrial habitats from economically-declining urban cores. Evidence of such consortiums at work is found, for example, in the comprehensive development of new multi-purpose central districts, having generously landscaped promenades threading together artfully-designed high rise business towers with entertainment and residential centers, all made regionally accessible by stylish, technologically-advanced rail transit. Satisfying to a productivity-minded fiscal conservative, the reclaiming of core cities in this way is said to reflect a forward-looking constituency determined to advance the global position of its city, competitively, symbolically and by appearance. It is probably this stage of globalization that is most important in providing momentum to global city mega-projects involving shoreline redevelopment in the urban core.

Being socially liberal, these same constituents also express deep commitment to their own personal freedoms and exhibit greater tolerance for and appreciation of foreign or ethnic cultures and variant lifestyles. As a consequence, many cities have developed social programs which invite and encourage the growth and integration of a multi-cultural community.  A new integration is being formed by “hybridizing” (Tajbakhsh, 2001) the city’s legislative body, business leadership, community organizations, and public gathering places. Unlike earlier re-gentrification, a new paradigm of ethnic and lifestyle diversity seems to have fostered a multi-cultural community model which enlarges civil liberties and international experiences for most of those choosing to be immersed in it.

 From a developmental standpoint, the three-stage transformations point to a fundamental rethinking of the role of cities as connector nodes in a multi-nucleated global network of economic, sociocultural and political interaction and exchange. Even more pointedly, it leads us to expect the resulting global city to be more than a purely techno-economic outcome and more than a passive participant in a corporate-driven macro-world system. As seen both in attributes of urban activity and in flows resulting from inter-urban relationships, the global city should exhibit several distinguishing dimensions, and be more diverse in its makeup and influence than a linear information-processing model would predict.

As caldrons of contemporary globalization, global cities today exhibit a developmental process now spanning 50 years and paralleling that of the three-stage transformations. They have emerged incrementally by brewing and incorporating numerous economic, social and political forces of a persistent post-WWII globalizing world. They also emerged under American influence since the transformations followed a certain temporal and geographic ordering that, until recently, placed the U.S. at the center of contemporary global-city design and imitation. 

Hence, in a highly discriminating fashion, “globalization can be deconstructed in terms of the strategic sites where global processes materialize” (Sassen, 1998, p. 392) and are grounded in what “geographically-situated people do” (Smith and Timberlake, 2001, p. 1657). As the differential result of both external globalizing demands and internal developmental policy responses, those that are global cities appear as strategic platforms of world connectivity. Even though most cities have some global attributes and connectivity, “platform” cities would be expected to contain a comprehensive set of dimensions reflective of the economic, social, and political components of the post-war period of tri-stage globalization.

With a focus on these components, Boschken’s work (2008) carves from the literature seven distinguishing dimensions which are examined using a sample of 53 large U.S. cities. The dimensions are statistically merged into a single factor which in turn is used to drive a K-means cluster analysis that separates out global from minimally-global cities. Using the factor values, the 53-city sample is compared in Figure 1. 

The dimensions identified as distinguishing a global city include [1] scale of the urban area where size appears to provide a critical mass necessary for holistic global functioning. The list also includes the global city as [2] an agglomerated command and control center for the global economy (Taylor, 2004; Sassen, 2001), [3] a world entertainment stage providing symbols, innovations and standards for emulation globally (Clark, 2004), [4] a non-corporate world research crucible composed of an agglomeration of university, government and tax-exempt organizations providing knowledge resources to a global village of policymakers (Brint, 2001), [5] a center of multiculturalism existing as a nexus for global social exchange (Sassen, 2004; Nyman, 1996), [6] a global gateway for international transportation including air passenger travel (Derudder and Witlox, 2005) and maritime trade (Boschken, 1988), and the city as [7] an integrated and accessible built environment augmented by effective rail-based mobility systems (Boschken, 2002).

Using a K-means clustering algorithm driven by the factor values, the results show that two cities (New York and Los Angeles), along with six other slightly lower-scoring cities (Washington, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Miami, and Philadelphia, respectively), to be distinctly separate from the remaining 45 in the sample (statistical significance = .000). For the most part, the difference between the two top global cities of New York and Los Angeles and the remaining six is explained by specialization.

All cities, including global ones, have attributes that give them unique distinction, but the six lesser global cities do not measure their uniqueness evenly across all dimensions. For example, the data show that Boston and Washington stand out as specialists in the command center function and as crucibles of research, and have world-class infrastructures that include transit and a global gateway (airport only for Washington). By comparison, Philadelphia provides exceptional global-city support systems (especially transit) but is not distinguished in global platform functions (command center, entertainment and research).

The San Francisco/Oakland area specializes in command-center functions and has a strong multicultural presence consistent with “uneven globalization” having an Asian or Pacific Rim emphasis. It also has a well known rail transit system, global-gateway airport (San Francisco) and containerized load-center seaport (Oakland). Miami specializes as a global gateway and maintains a strong multicultural presence skewed toward its Caribbean and Latin American ties, but is not distinguished by platform functions.

As presented, the dimensions may be categorized into two types of urban artifacts. First, the global city contains a critical mass of central functions and infrastructure associated with a world assemblage of “parts.” These interactive parts are engaged in the co-production of applied knowledge, symbolic creations, capital management, policy coordination, transaction control, logistics and mobility. Second, the global city exhibits the “on-site” cultural and political content of globalization provided by an urban milieu of scientific research and education, media and entertainment, and multicultural amenities. Referring to these as dual identities of function and content, Nyman (1996) argues the global city is about both “the city in the world” and “the world in the city” (p. 6).

To more fully appreciate the potential synergy of these seven disparate dimensions, one also might conceive of them as holistically interacting in a way that simultaneously imprints the momentum and routine of the world stage onto an urbanite’s daily activities and consciousness. Global cities possess a “complex and multifaceted” character (Sassen, 2001, p. 351) which immerses urbanites in a different comprehensiveness than found in cities exhibiting minimal global attributes. Therefore, one would expect that how urbanites interact and what activities they pursue might be driven by or determined within the context of a city’s global centrality and connectivity.

 

Global Cities Are Coastal Cities

 

The unmistakable reality of global cities is their immense scale, energy-consuming activity levels, culture-bearing ritualism, corporate protocols, and transterritorial dominance across numerous levels of consciousness. As Figure 2 indicates, eight cities were included in Boschken’s (2008) cluster analysis as global cities. Each is in rank order according to the number of global-city dimensions exhibited, which ranged from three to seven. By contrast, the remaining 45 cities in the sample averaged zero global city dimensions. In terms of population, the eight global cities combined represent 20 percent of the 2000 U.S. population, and the percentage figure is growing disproportionately relative to other cities. 

However, in addition to these global-city dimensions, another defining characteristic is that the eight cities are all coastal cities. That is, they exist within 60 miles of a coastline which NOAA (2004) defines as the coastal zone (Chicago is located on a fresh-water coast). They contain the nation’s largest working harbors, exist in the midst of major wetlands, and typically have extended beaches and developed waterfronts containing high rise residences, parks and commercial ventures. As such, all have coastal access and dependencies that make their environs very different than other smaller coastal enclaves and non-coastal cities.

Even more important, the combined population of these eight coastal cities represent 40 percent of the 153 million people who reside in U.S. coastal counties (NOAA, 2004).These statistics indeed belie the more common image of the coastal city as a bucolic, pastoral, cleansing setting of a town along a stretch of undisturbed pristine beach. Nevertheless, in terms of the proportion of population in the coastal zone, or relative amounts of point and non-point source pollution, or contribution to GDP, global cities are by far the greater urban representative of the coastal city in all parts of maritime America except perhaps the Gulf. Moreover, the reach of their physical, socioeconomic, and political impacts typically extend well beyond the urban boundaries that define them geographically.  

Herein lies the dilemma (some would say discontinuity), between the man-made built environment and the natural ecology. Environmentally, the coastal zone is a particularly fragile and delicate ecology made up of multiple webs of terrestrial and aquatic interdependencies. There are no other ecological systems on earth that have the degree of complexity and interaction of subsystems as that found along the coast, its estuaries and harbors, saline wetlands and river deltas. Since the vast majority of all living organisms have their gestational origins within the coastal zone, the issues of sustainability and biodiversity should be apparent as major policymaking considerations.

Yet, in the case of global cities, the two worlds – one human, the other natural – are seemingly irreconcilable. When the coastal city is a global city that imprints momentum and routine of the world stage onto an urbanite’s daily activities and consciousness, many consequences occur to the ecological systems of the coastal zone. Indeed, while observers may view cities on the coast in concert with a coastal landscape, global cities seem to simply overwhelm a coastal ecological character.

 

Two Agents of Consequence

 

To account for the forces behind this dilemma, one might ask: Are American global cities inherently coastal in spite of the fact that they appear to be more caustic to the coastal ecology than other cities? Are there inherent agents that give such cities sustainability and momentum in the coastal zone? Some answers may be found in the requirements of globalization and in the socioeconomic source of lifestyles found in global cities.

1. Load-Center Seaports. Globalization is rooted in the ability to move huge tonnage of goods swiftly around the world at a scale and efficiency that makes the cost per unit of transportation insignificant or minimal in the final cost of goods sold. Such an achievement allows goods to be produced anywhere in the world and sold anywhere in the world, and allows producers to compete on the basis of a good’s quality and manufacturing cost regardless of their geographical location. To make this possible, transformational technologies in ship design and at seaport terminals emerged in the 1970s that revolutionized maritime shipping by placing goods in large salt-resistant metal containers, the principal means by which international goods are shipped (Boschken, 1988).

At the core of this foreign trade shipping revolution was the maritime seaport which acts as a transshipment point in a world system of logistics, finance and control. Its location in the coastal zone provided not only the ability to transfer goods across the sea-land barrier but also provide a host of other functions including container consolidation and redirection, insurance and documentation, security, global finance, and other activities of the command and control function of the global economy. Hence, the pressures emerging from globalization required the agglomeration and centralization of command and control functions around large containerized seaports.

Solidifying their presence in coastal areas, cities that had both large containerized ports called “load centers” and global command-center platforms in place by the 1980s were able to emerge as transshipment centers of the global economy. This type of seaport now dominates global trade because they are few in number and allow ships to on- and off-load their entire cargoes at one stop. As shown in Figure 3, load centers are a principal element connecting global cities to coastal areas. 63 percent of the eight global cities identified in Boschken (2008) are recognized as having load center ports. Boston and Chicago ports have a smaller presence and Washington, DC has none. Combined, the eight global cities account for 61 percent of all containerized cargo entering the U.S. Three cities not included in the global-city cluster (Houston, Norfolk and Seattle) account for most of the remaining foreign container traffic.

 2. An Upper Middle Class Lifestyle (Genre). Some might argue that urban impacts on the coastal zone are greater for global cities simply because they rank among the largest in size. Even so, there also may be an agent that delivers even higher impacts by stimulating greater human activity per capita. Global cities are a magnet for lifestyles that engender exceptionally high activity and intra-urban mobility levels. Not to be confused with activities of a more concealed upper class, these “on the go” lifestyles seem to coalesce around a highly visible presence of upper middle class (UMC) – a socioeconomic status (SES) made up of well educated professionals and their cosmopolitan and urbane families (Boschken, 2002).

Reich (1992) refers to them as “symbolic analysts” engaged in what Brint (2001) calls a “scientific-professional knowledge economy.” Both on and off the job, the UMC tend to think of their opportunities, movements and mobility in the context of an enriched “urban field”, described by Friedmann and Miller (1965) as a mental construct of the metropolitan area having discontiguous geographical areas and gerrymandered boundaries. Perhaps unaware of their “transterritorial” movements, the UMC seem to give little thought to their cross-town commuting to events that are spatially distanced and remote from one another.

Why is such a group more active in an urban setting? UMC breadwinners not only commute to their professional jobs, but also are likely to have an “agglomeration” of business meetings with representatives of other organizations (public and private) outside the office (Porter, 1998). Some intra-urban travel would be consistent with this characterization, possibly even involving “neutral” locations such as restaurants, theatre, golf, or even a trip to the airport for an out-of-town location. Since the UMC have proportionally higher dual-breadwinner families (often both professionally employed) than the median family, their work-related commuting habits may be magnified further.

Add to this the high-aspiring UMC family commuting with children to the best college-prep schools across town, meeting for a game of tennis at the club, after-school and weekend activities for the children, and evening events outside of work. Further, add myriad activities (jobs and commuting) of others induced by UMC consumption demands for residential maid service and landscapers, private social and recreational clubs, limo and retail pick-up & delivery services, dental and cosmetic maintenance, etc.

Of consequence, the UMC are more evident in global cities than elsewhere (Boschken, 2003). There are two reasons for this concentration. First, the nature of a global city in providing a platform for globally-connected organizations (i.e., corporations engaged in command-center functions, non-corporate global research institutions, world entertainment and media firms) creates a unique agglomeration of postindustrial (knowledge-processing) employment opportunities, contacts and exchanges for highly educated professionals in global business, academia, and entertainment and media (the latter of which includes artists, authors, playwrights, actors, electronic gurus, and entertainment managers). Furthermore, as a genre, the UMC imparts a “systemic power” (Stone, 1980) over the activity scene by providing a standard of behavior that some of the larger general urban population may emulate as well.

Second, global cities are gateways of travel and temporary stays for global business, research and entertainment purposes, and, therefore, attract a larger mix of foreign highly-educated professionals than other cities. Like their indigenous counterparts, these foreign UMC are inclined to engage in heightened levels of activity and seek greater mobility throughout the city. This foreign contingent (often with families in toe) further magnifies a UMC presence in the global-city “scene.”  

An extended discussion of this connection between the global city and the UMC is found in a variety of research, including that of Sassen, (2001), Brint (2001), Clark and Hoffman-Martinot (1998), Boschken (2002), and Florida (2001). Additionally, there is some empirical evidence from this study supporting the association between the UMC and global cities. In the 53-cities sample, correlations of the 7-dimension global-city factor with (1) the percent professional UMC in a city and (2) the number of international passengers passing through city airports in 2000 are significant at the .01 level (r sq = .40 and .87, respectively). This suggests a significant affinity of the UMC with global cities, but it does not mean UMC are found only in global cities.

Nevertheless, the empirical data also appear to support the argument that heightened levels of UMC activity in the global city has consequences on the human habitat and environment beyond what city size alone would predict. For example, Figure 4 shows significant correlations between UMC global-platform activity areas (as measured by command-center and institutional research employment and entertainment consumption) and pressures on specific urban mobility modes. 

With regard to public transit consumption, the greater the UMC global-platform activities, the greater the per capita consumption of public transit (r sq = .79, .69, .59, respectively). Higher levels of urban traffic congestion are also consistent with higher UMC platform activity levels (r sq = .50, .42, .54, respectively). From a global travel perspective, greater numbers of international airport passengers is highly associated with higher UMC platform activities (r sq = .76, .42, .84, respectively). Even though parts of global platform activities are found in cities other than the eight identified by Boschken as global,  the data suggest these three indicators of urban mobility pressures are significantly related to specific areas of UMC activities, the highest concentrations of which are found in global cities.

Although this circumstantial evidence seems to indicate global cities may be disproportionately influenced by a UMC genre, how do we confirm that its comparatively larger impacts are mostly unique to global cities? The answer is found in results produced by a K-means cluster analysis using as drivers per-capita transit consumption, traffic congestion and international travel flows. The results are reported in Figure 5 and show global cities to dominate clusters having the highest traces of UMC-induced mobility pressures. 

In the case of per capita transit consumption, 75 percent of global cities (Los Angeles and Miami were excluded) appear in the highest consumption cluster containing 7 cities (of which Honolulu is the only non-global city included). Likewise, 75 percent of global cities (New York and Philadelphia were excluded) appear in the highest traffic congestion cluster containing 15 cities. By comparison, only 27 percent of the remaining 45 cities are in this cluster. In the case of international airport travel, all eight global cities are in the cluster of greatest concentration of international passengers containing 14 cities. Only 13 percent of the remaining 45 cities are in this cluster.

 

Policy Challenges

 

            In bringing these two economic and social factors into focus as principal forces in global city development, this paper begs a question about what the coastal zone might experience going forward. Will shifts in the global economy call for further concentration of load-center seaports around the business services and infrastructure of global cities? Can we expect the UMC to continue a preference for the professional, lifestyle and entertainment-rich opportunities found mostly in global cities? What population pressures do these pose for coastal land use and marine resources? How much does it matter that global cities are coastal cities?

Answers to these questions are too vast to deal with in a paper-length treatise, but one can surmise certain possible outcomes. For one, globalization is far enough along in its transformation of institutions, lifestyles and culture that one probably can predict an irreversible influence on the coastal scene. The load-center seaports found in global cities are likely to experience continued concentration of trade flows (increasing the probable incidence of transportation congestion, harbor pollution, chemical spills and terrorist attack). Since command-center platforms are found in global cities, crises in the global economy are likely to be felt disproportionately in these cities with consequent crises in their fiscal capacity to provide public services and infrastructure. The UMC genre is likely to remain the trendsetting influence on urban activity levels and consequent needs for high intraurban mobility. A combination of these population pressures forge deep contrasts: a city in the best of times and a city in the worst of times…

Along with the centrality of American global cities in world dynamics and population migrations, these metropolitan areas also may be merging into vast “mega-city” strips along the coastline. Even with adequate public resources, technological innovations, “smart growth” planning techniques and the green revolution, we are likely to experience in such a merging of cityscapes a more built-up urban setting on the coastline with fewer pristine areas and more degradation of environmental quality.  

Part of the impact will be on the coastal marine habitat (especially wetlands and the marine nursery) and part will be on the landscape. Although cities outside North America (e.g., Mexico City, Buenos Ares, Shanghai, Beijing) are frequently used as examples of what is to come (Douglass, 2000; Yusuf and Wu, 2002; Monkkonen, et al, 2004), the eastern seaboard from Boston to Washington, DC and the greater Southern California region are often cited as American urban areas that have already approached the ecology’s carrying capacity. At the end of the day, it will require enormous political fortitude and fiscal resources to maintain a balance between global and coastal.

In America, contemporary global cities are coastal cities. Colonial history aside, they are probably so because of the three-stage evolution of Post-WWII globalization. It would be easy to conclude that similar economic and social factors have produced the same global city-coastal connection around the world. Although this may be mostly true, major exceptions are found in Europe, the Middle East and Russia. For example, London, Istanbul and Rome are coastal cities, but Paris, Berlin, Frankfort/Düsseldorf and Moscow are not. Moreover, even though the prominence of a UMC genre seems to be a distinguishing attribute of all global cities, in many parts of the world, load-center container ports are more likely to be detached from a global city. These oddities suggest a basis for further study that might give insight about future directions of the global city as a coastal city.

 

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 FIGURE 1

 

FIGURE 2

53 U.S. Cities: K-Means Cluster Analysis, 2000

_______________________________________________________________________

                                                                                           COASTAL CITY FEATURES

CITY (rank order        Global-City         Population        Coastal Access       Other Coastal 

   by 7-dimension        Dimensions*  (urbanized area                                    Connectivity

   factor)      _____________________in millions)_______________________________

New York                           7                    17,800                   Harbor &         WTC &

                                                                                                Seaport            Waterfront

Los Angeles                        6                     11,790                  Harbor &         Beaches &

                                                                                                Seaport            Wetlands

Chicago                               5                       8,308                  Great Lake      Beaches &

                                                                                                & Seaway        Waterfront

Boston                                 5                      4,034                  Harbor &         Beaches &

                                                                                                Seaport            Wetlands

San Francisco/Oakland       4                      4,016                  Bay Harbor     Beaches &

                                                                                                & Seaport        Wetlands

Washington, DC                 3                       3,933                  River               Waterfront

 

Miami                                  3                       4,919                  Wetlands         Beaches &

                                                                                                & Seaport        Waterfront

Philadelphia                        3                       5,150                  Bay Harbor     Waterfront

                                                                                                & Seaport

 

Combined Population of     -                     59,950

8 U.S. Global Cities                                       

 

Mean Figures of

45 Remaining Cities            0                       1,524

_______________________________________________________________________

*For those cities within the global-city cluster, the number of dimensions in which they scored as global cities ranged from 7 (for New York) to 3 (for Washington, Miami and Philadelphia). By contrast, minimally-global cities appeared in only 0 to 2 dimensions (80 percent of these scored on zero global-city dimensions).

FIGURE 3

Foreign Containerized Maritime Cargo at Seaports, 2000 Data

 

CITY (rank order                    TRANSSHIPMENT CENTRALITY IN GLOBAL TRADE

   by 7-dimension                       Seaport Type*           Seaport Size**        % US Foreign

New York                                       Primary                      2.36                       13.0%

                                                     Load Center

Los Angeles                                    Primary                      6.62                       36.5

                                                     Load Center

Chicago                                         Small, Misc.                0.03                        0.1

 

Boston                                      Small, Container             0.06                        0.1

 

San Francisco/Oakland                  Secondary                              0.96                        5.3

                                                     Load Center

Washington DC                                  -                                -                               -

 

Miami                                             Secondary                                .72                          4.0

                                                     Load Center

Philadelphia                                   Secondary                                .27                          1.5

                                                     Load Center

8 Global Cities                                    -                          11.02                       61.0%

 

Total Foreign

* Cluster Categories determined by a K-means 3-cluster method.

**Measured by the number of “twenty-foot-equivalent units” (TEUs) transshipped at a seaport which are large 8 foot by 8 foot salt-resistant metal containers ranging in length from 20 to 52 feet. Only foreign trade is included.

 

Source: Port Import Export Reporting Service (2001), “U.S. Waterborne Foreign Trade: Total Containerized Cargo” (Washington, DC: Maritime Administration).

FIGURE 4

Correlations (r sq) Using 2000 Data

 

                                                U P P E R  M I D D L E  C L A S S  A C T I V I T I E S*

MOBILITY                                        Command-Center   Institutional   Entertainment

Transit Consumption (per capita)                    .79                      .69                 .58

 

Urban Traffic Congestion                               .50                      .42                  .54

 

* Indicators for these activity types are three of the seven dimensions that make up the global-city factor. Correlations are significant at the .01 level using a 2-tailed method.

 

 

 

FIGURE 5

53 U.S. Cities: K-Means Cluster Analysis, 2000 Data

 

                                                INCLUDED IN HIGHEST MOBILITY CLUSTER FOR:

                                                Transit Consumption      Traffic Congestion      International

GLOBAL CITY                         (cluster size = 7)          (cluster size = 15)        Air Travel*

New York                                              X                              NO                              X

 

Los Angeles                                         NO                             X                               X

 

Chicago                                                   X                              X                               X

 

Boston                                                     X                              X                               X

 

San Francisco/Oakland                           X                              X                               X

 

Washington, DC                                     X                              X                               X

 

Miami                                                     NO                            X                               X

 

 

 NO = Global City not in highest mobility cluster.

 

*Measured as the percent of total U.S. international travelers passing through the city’s airport.