What Happens When the Richest U.S. Cities Turn to the World?
“Not only are they losing their power,” he said of the places left out, “but they’re losing their connection to the power centers as well.”
That dynamic also leaves smaller places at the mercy of global cities, where
decisions are made about which plants to close or where to create new jobs.
“These types of urban economies need other major urban economies more than they need the standardized production economies of other cities in their country,” said Saskia Sassen, a sociologist at Columbia who has long studied the global cities
that occupy interdependent nodes in the world economy.
“It is also, as far as we can see, permanent, simply because the economy
that supported the earlier relationships has gone away and shows no sign of coming back.”
The Rise of Global Cities
For much of the 20th century, wages in poorer parts of the country were rising faster than wages in richer places.
“And other places will be kind of left out.”
Greg Spencer, another researcher at the University of Toronto, has analyzed the global footprints of the world’s 500 largest firms in advanced industries like machinery, digital services
and life sciences — mapping their headquarters, regional offices, manufacturing plants, warehouses, retail stores.
The companies that now drive the Bay Area’s soaring wealth — and
that represent part of the American economy that’s booming — don’t need these communities in the same way.
