Global cities urban realities, london & paris (semester with internship) - spring (london to paris)10/25/2023 Once rigidly egalitarian, China now has some of the world’s highest rates of income inequality. These cities are not only failing to provide opportunities for upward mobility they’re producing the class inequalities found in “luxury cities” such as London and New York. Cities in the developing world are growing, but largely because they’re the only alternative to poverty and even starvation in the countryside. “To spread out economic growth,” the report claimed, is to discourage it.Ī closer look, however, suggests a more nuanced reality. A recent World Bank report argued that large urban concentrations-the denser, the better-are the most prodigious creators of opportunity and wealth. Unfortunately, these urban ideas appear to be contagious, as they’re being applied to the expanding cities of Asia and other developing regions. Though leading urban theorists love to celebrate the most rarified parts of the city economy-Saskia Sassen refers to “urban glamour zones” that thrive in what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proudly calls the “luxury city”-they tend to forget about working- and middle-class residents. Today, many of the world’s largest cities, in both the developed and the developing world, are failing to serve this aspirational function. In his time, Amsterdam was that city, not just for ambitious Dutch peasants and artisans but for people from all over Europe. A great city, wrote René Descartes in the 17th century, was “an inventory of the possible,” a place where people could lift their families out of poverty and create new futures. Throughout much of history, cities have served as incubators for upward mobility.
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