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Iran Coming to Deal with Megacities |
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" Megacities
are constellations on earth constructed of separate spatial parts and
separate social and performance spaces." |
Megacities:
In 1992 there were at least 13
cities with more than 10 million inhabitants. But size is not the identifying
feature of a megacity. Megacities are real knots of the global economy and the
most powerful states. They are vast performances in global management,
production, centers of political power, and control of the media, and symbolic
capability for creation and extension of dominant messages in the realm of
megacity. According to the 1991 classification of the United Nations, Tokyo,
Sao Polo, New York, Mexico City, Shanghai, Bombay, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires,
Seoul, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Calcutta, and Osaka are megacities that are
different from one another. Jakarta, Moscow, Cairo, New Delhi, London, Paris,
Lagos, Dhaka, Karachi and Tian Chin must be added to the above group. Not all
the above cities are dominant centers of the world economy. For example, Lagos
and Dhaka do not yet have any share in all the trends and performances
affecting the lives of 100 million people involved in the global economy.
Megacities should be defined in terms of their power of attraction in
extensive regions of the world. Megacities merge in global economy, connect
information networks with each other and concentrate global power in
themselves. Moreover megacities accommodate a large part of the world's
population who are trying to survive. What makes megacities a new form of city
is their establishment around the global communication networks. Consequently
they act as principal knots whereas ultimately, they are not related and
joined to each other from a social or aerial point of view.
Megacities are spatial shapes that are
specified by performance of relations in extensive areas, but at the same time
they are disconnected from the point of view of land application. Their social
and performance heritage is vague and is organized in separate and distinct
territorial entities whose social customs are not specified by the whole
system. Megacities are constellations on earth constructed of separate spatial
parts and separate social and performance spaces.
Early in the 21st century the
Tokyo-Yokohama-Nagoya corridor which are economic performance units, will join
the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe constellation and will be linked to each other easily by
fast means of communications like railways, and will thus create the biggest
metropolitan and macro region, not only from a population point of view but
also from the concentration of technological and economic capabilities.
With social, urban and environmental
problems together with excessive urban concentration megacities are developing
and will continue to develop both in size and attraction. They will try to
establish high-level performances, settlement of wealthy and educated social
groups. The reasons are as follows:
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Megacities are economic, technological
and commercial centers in their own countries and in the world system. They
are in fact motors of the development trend.
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Megacities are centers of cultural
renovation, creation of models and scientific research, including decisive
strategic trends in the information era.
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Megacities are centers of political
power even in cases where the government center is elsewhere, because they
offer ideological and economic forces.
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Megacities are communication points in
the global communications network. For example internet, in spite of its
electronic comprehensibility and inflexible architecture, cannot bypass
megacities and their systems, because they operate on the basis of
telecommunications systems which are built around big mother cities, and
also because the internet, on account of its power needs special information
systems and social groups resident in megacities.
Frontier-less Cities:
Globalization of economy has
encouraged economic cooperation of sub regions in several areas. Successful
growth triangles, Asian development models of economic regions, consist of
several countries the capital for each of which is an important metropolitan
area. These regions may be called economies without frontiers, in which
international division of labor has extended the advantages to urban centers.
The cities that are affected by economies without frontiers cannot be regarded
as distinct economies any longer but are really parts of more extensive
metropolitan areas.
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" Large
and extensive metropolitan areas may expand up to a maximum 100 km from
the city center and may be characterized by high-level economic
diversification and reciprocal relations." |
Large and extensive metropolitan areas
may expand up to a maximum 100 kilometers from the city center and may be
characterized by high-level economic diversification and reciprocal relations.
It may affect a high percentage of employees in non-agricultural sectors and
the deep influence of world market in rural areas. Large metropolitan areas
denote high requirement for development and are conceived as economic zones
rather than urban or rural areas.
An example of economies without
frontiers has developed between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia; it is
called Sijori. This area bypasses the city-state of Singapore, and
growth of the Singapore nucleus is directly due to its economic maturity. The
flow of population and goods from cities to outskirts are accompanied by an
increase in the level of external capital.
Another example of extraterritorial
cooperation development, comprising capital, technological and management date
is related to consolidation of Hong Kong, Taiwan and southern provinces of
China (i.e. Guangdong & Fujian). Hong Kong has taken shape as the center of
Zhujiang delta and as its financial and command center.
Sanatorium Cities:
In the face of inattention to
environmental problems in some industrial towns in the regional system,
globalization has led to the policy of sustainable ecological development.
This trend is discernible in Sydney and
Vancouver. These two cities have three common characteristics, extra
industrial economy is merged with regional economy in Asia and Pacific. These
two cities have natural environment with high concentration of rest facilities
and enjoy high per capita level of social welfare together with political
acceptance of environmental quality improvement.
The globalization forces effective in
Vancouver and Sydney are financial capital flow, together with their extra
industrial economic structure and trade of goods (in case of Vancouver) and
immigration flow. Sydney is the capital of New South Wales and the most
important city in Australia. Among the cities of Australia, Sydney has the
highest regional command share of extraterritorial cooperation in Regions of
Asia and the Pacific. It hosts three quarters of national and international
banks in Australia. It is the most suitable regional command site of extra
national companies in Asia and the Pacific. 39% of the region's top 20 central
companies in the four sectors of accountancy, publicity, management,
consultancy and international institutes are located in Sydney. This
performance concentration is related both to extra industrial economy and also
to its role as the center for command and control.
Commerce in Vancouver is like
information and financial flow in Sydney. Among commercial ties, the relations
between Vancouver and Hong Kong have attracted the most attention. The region
of Vancouver has established most important ties with Japan. Due to their need
for industrial and agricultural resources on a large scale, 11 examples of the
biggest commercial companies of Japan called Sogoshosha have opened
subsidiary branches in Canada. Five out of 11 companies have chosen Vancouver
as the local command center, because 60% of the trade of Sogoshosha is
carried out through the port of Vancouver.
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" Teleport,
which links several cable satellite services to a large number of
customers through telephone, fiber optics or short wave installations,
requires delicate computer architecture so consequently, it is
established in big cities." |
Vancouver and Sydney have recently been
converted into recognized centers for Asian immigrants. Consolidation and the
expansion of Sydney with the global economy, including a local airport, have
turned it into a center for air traffic and has played an important role in
this state of affairs. Vancouver has had the fastest rate of growth in urban
areas in North America, and its population has risen from 1.2 to 1.6 million
from 1981 to 1996. 600,000 people of the abovementioned population have
arrived during the 1991-1994 period. The rate of international immigration has
risen from 33% in 1980 to 59% in 1994. Most of the immigrants are from Asia.
The secret of their relative advantage is, amongst other things, favorable
city atmospheres (climate, ports, coasts, mountains, low degree of pollution)
as well as multiculturalism. Vancouver is a part of an extensive geographical
region stretching for 120 km.
Sydney has beautiful coasts and shelters
and attractive climate that have created a desirable environment. The
government believes in protecting the environment as the important center for
tourism and attracting large numbers of tourists. Existence of local
conditions, government decisions and activities of the private sector has been
instrumental to the creation of sanatorium cities.
Marginal Cities:
America has experienced a new
wave of territorial extension in margins of cities, which have, somehow, been
emulated by others. This new spatial form is called edge city, which has
empirically been defined as the combination of five indices.
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An area in which at least 5 million
square feet of administrative space has been concentrated and serves as the
working site for the information era.
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At least 600,000 square feet is
devoted to shopping centers.
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There are more jobs than houses.
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People should regard this area as a
special space.
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There should not be any structures
therein which can make the city seem 30 years old.
Development with magnitude of such
territorial complexity has been registered in margins of some cities such as
Boston, New Jersey, Detroit, Atlanta, Phoenix, Texas, South California, San
Francisco and Washington D.C. Each of these spatial units has been extended by
means of kilometers of administrative buildings, commercial facilities, and
residential areas all of which have been built recently and which are
accessible by means of communication highways. This kind of urbanization is
name Ex-urban, which organizes life around the two poles of "computer work"
and special centers dominated by audio visual culture.
Development of this ex-urban
constellation stresses performance dependency of different units and different
trends of urban systems at distances, reduces the role of land proximity and
increases the role of communications networks including telephone lines and
land transportation.
This model of urbanization is related to
historical experiences and American culture, and is characterized by constant
efforts to overcome social and urban difficulties by means of geographical
mobility: first emigration to the U.S. to escape the conditions of the country
of origin, then moving westward and benefiting from the vast area of the
continent. Later on the middle classes left city centers and established
suburban urbanization based on use of motor vehicles, television and ownership
of individual homes and using government subsidies. Now they have abandoned
suburbs, left the rural areas and have organized these marginal cities along
highway arteries. Their only point of reference consists of scattered working
places, individual inhabitants of compacted lands and without urban
concentration and service centers in communication knots of highways.
This is not the end of cities, because
New York, San Francisco and many other urban centers in several mother cities
are busily carrying out their social, cultural, commercial and management
activities. Now we are witnessing relative increases in the number of
Americans abandoning any kind of urban experience in their daily lives. New
communications systems have a tendency for concentration of activities and
dispersion of population. Villages are emptied and abandoned, cities remain
and survive but their residents decrease daily and ex-urban urbanization
dependent on telephone lines and highways create new urban forms.
Cities with Double Roles:
Simultaneous new economic and
technical model is defined by dynamism of extensive production and territorial
and social segregation. This conflict is seen on the basis of a global
territorial level. For instance, the semi arid region of Africa, except South
Africa, is increasingly isolated from the dominant technological and economic
circuit of the global system. Separating models also appear through inequality
trends for regional concentration. A new factor is that the separating events
cause internal social separation of mother cities found in all countries.
The factors affecting the duality trend
on natural basis are as follows:
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Housing and urban services crisis,
which afflict a large part of urban population, including ordinary civil
servants with average income, in most countries.
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Existence and growth of social
inequality in big cities, from London or Madrid to Sao Polo or Mexico.
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Urban poverty, which affects a large
part of population in most African cities commensurate with general
structure of governments.
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The phenomenon of social segregation
itself is a factor that lowers down large segments of society of mother
cities to subsistence level.
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Industries with advanced technology
present an employment model, which is quite different from the traditional
model.
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" Various
urban models in the globalization era point to the fact that along with
the new international division of labor, capital goes to regions that
enjoy relative advantages and have rich information infrastructure at
their disposal." |
This employment model needs two
professional criteria: specialist engineers and researchers on the one hand, a
mass of semi-skilled and a small number of administrative personnel and
skilled workers on the other hand. Hence progress of productive and financial
services in some cities have led to a large number of occupations with high
salaries, but it has greatly increased the number of low income families in
those cities, and has ended up in polarization of society as the most
important consequence of capital increases for production and large scale
immigration of foreign workers from various cities of the world. In these
cities passage from factory production to services from the mid 1970s, has
caused a wide rift in various social groups and has placed the poorest social
class involved in low income occupations beside the richest persons engaged in
highly lucrative production jobs and has led to the extension of dual role
cities, examples of which are found in most world cities. New York, which is
probably the economic capital of the world as residence for the biggest
capitalists, is a truly dual role city. Economic restructuring of New York
during last 30 years has led to much social inequality. Confrontation between
the rich and poor will be intensified. Different metropolitan districts are
affected in different ways. Wastage by industries depresses mostly the suburbs
whereas growth is concentrated in Manhattan. The changing geography of job
opportunities shapes the apparent social geography of metropolitan districts.
The rich inhabit major parts of Manhattan, but in most remote areas decline of
social status is observed. The consequence for this trend is intensification
of conflict between Manhattan and its suburbs. Many groups of informal
occupations have been set up to respond to local needs. In South Bronx
informal job means subsistence but in Soho it means an aristocratic life
style.
Therefore urban duality of New York does
not reflect simple difference between the rich and the poor and is not limited
to reciprocal conception of those who drive luxurious limousines on the one
hand, and homeless people scattered in the streets on the other. It reflects a
social urban structure which is based on mutual relations between conflicting
poles in the new information economy, whose logic of development polarizes the
society, separates social groups, isolates cultures and segregates use of
metropolitan space on the basis of various performances of social and ethnic
groups.
Social urban duality in poor countries
is also seen in terms of ethnic, professional, gender and educational groups.
According to studies carried out in Burkina Faso in 1992, 25% of the active
population was not employed, and most employed persons did not have steady
jobs, and 58% were poor.
There is a close relation between
employment conditions and poverty. There is a relation between education
levels and chances for finding a job. 60% of wage earners get their jobs
through intervention of friends or membership in ethnic groups. Attainment of
special training too depends on personal relations and even starting a formal
or informal job, irrespective of the size, depends on going through
administrative regulations, which in turn, depend on communication system
along ethnic lines. There are social differences between formal centers and
informal margins. These differences are seen in the capitals of other African
countries as well.
Information Cities:
Some Asian cities have gained
particular importance in information technology. Singapore has been trying to
reconstruct its economy on the basis of an information city. Information
technology has been the focus of attention in designing future cities. Project
Teleport has been designed as an information city at a distance of less than
six kilometers from the center of Tokyo. This project has drawn a great deal
of attention in Malaysia too.
Teleport, which links several cable
satellite services to a large number of customers through telephone, fiber
optics or short wave installations, requires delicate computer architecture so
consequently, it is established in big cities. That is why 27 out of 40
teleport systems, which were active in the U.S. in 1987, were established in
big cities.
Having followed the above
infrastructures, the companies are established in big cities, and in turn
expand long distant communication systems and other intelligent networks
commensurate with demand. These systems expand various urban performances and
create many employment opportunities in some fields. Hence high-level advanced
services are concentrated in definite knots and regions in some countries of
the world. This concentration follows certain hierarchy in urban centers, and
according to very important performances, skills, power and capital, are
concentrated in main metropolitan areas of the world which have financial and
consultancy links and commercial services, like New York, London, Tokyo etc,
or in some areas dominated by special markets, like Chicago, Singapore, Honk
Kong, Osaka, Frankfort, Los angles, san Francisco, Amsterdam and Milan.
Technopolises:
Another kind of urban
development, which along with economic globalization has changed the faces of
cities in Asia and the Pacific, is establishment of big complexes of
development and research. In Asia these complexes are located outside the
Asian city centers. In Japan the government has encouraged establishment of
technologically advanced cities or 'technopolises'. Among such cities one can
cite the city of Tsukuba in the north east of Tokyo. Taiwan has applied the
technique through the establishment of a scientific park, which is the center
of production of advanced technology, research and development, in Hsinchu
outside Taipei.
Decisions of transnational companies are
linked not only on the basis of the extent of infrastructure but on the type
and quality of infrastructure as a necessity as well. Governments in the
Asia-Pacific region, in trying to provide services to big companies, have
developed industrial parks in the suburbs of their cities. Most of such
projects are concentrated in or near big metropolitan cities of the region.
Industrial parks, supported by government or private investors, have worked
successfully in Singapore, Taipei and Seoul.
Export Processing Zones:
One of the most important and
debatable innovations for export promotion and foreign investment is
export-processing zones. In fact these areas are export territories where some
encouragements are envisaged to attract foreign investors and pave the way for
the entry of their capitals and pursue definite objectives. These zones are
established within airports, harbors, at the side of big cities or in
relatively undeveloped regions as part of a development strategy of those
regions. 60% of employees of these zones are in Asia. Hong Kong has extensive
export activities. Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea and the Philippines have a
large number of employees in EPZs, who play an important role in their
industrial development trends.
Regional Urban Performance Systems:
Among the forms of urban
development in Asia and the Pacific, a mention should be made of the
appearance of the extensive "urban corridor" between Tokyo and northeast China
through Korea to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines as the East Asian
Regional Urban System. This big urban corridor consists of a series of smaller
"urban corridors." The 'S' shaped urban corridor stretching for 1,500
kilometers of urban belt from Beijing to Tokyo through Pyongyang and Seoul,
connects 112 cities each with 2 million inhabitants within an urban zone of 98
million. Urban network, within performance urban system of Asia and the
Pacific has not developed uniformly. Demand for emergence of regional urban
system varies depending on different systems but takes place mostly under
influence of economic factors. Cities that are at the apex of the urban
hierarchy are main capital exporters. In these cities commercial companies
play a commanding role and exercise important control in the region and the
world (like Tokyo in Japan at the same or lower level, Seoul in Korea and
Taipei in Taiwan). These cities develop differently with important recipients
of direct industrial foreign investments for example Jakarta in Indonesia,
Shanghai in China and Bangkok in Thailand). Moreover two commercial centers of
Hong Kong and Singapore display a level of extraterritorial development, which
has been unprecedented in other metropolitan centers.
Transindustrial Cities:
Extra-industrial cities are
dominant and advanced in information processing. Tokyo and Seoul and Taipei,
on the lower end of the scale, are examples of extra-industrial development.
These global cities are concentration centers of trans-national companies,
multinational banks and production and commercial services. In Tokyo employees
of the industrial sector have decreased and employees of service sectors have
increased. Tokyo is the place for extensive concentration of performance of
central management, research and development companies and government agencies
in Japan. A disproportionate part of population of the country is accumulated
in Seoul (23% in 1995). Advanced technological services and activities are
highly concentrated in the metropolitan area of Seoul. 57% of total industrial
installations and 51% of their workers were concentrated in the metropolitan
area in 1995. All Korean trans-national companies were in this city and
benefited from close contact with the central government, which is imperative
for commercial transactions. In fact extra industrial cities have employees
that bring about development of the fourth sector, namely occupations like
management, administrative and advanced technologies.
These relations give a special form to
the urban panorama. Cities are turned into concentration places of big
projects, particularly residential and commercial spaces with high rental,
developmental and research centers, leisure and entertainment facilities for
high income groups of employees. Teleports are developed for easy and fast
transfer of information and illumination of intelligent buildings, banks and
other financial institutions in the central commercial areas and give a multi
center structure to cities, each center playing a different role in the
economy of the city. This structure is clearly visible in Tokyo and Seoul.
Industrial Cities:
Industrial production trends are
of paramount importance for development of regional production system, hence
these centers play very important role in urban performance systems.
Industrial centers consist of some urban areas such as Bangkok, Jakarta, and
Shanghai. These centers have recently witnessed reduction of agricultural
activities and extension of industrial concentration in outer layers of the
city. Industrial development has continued with the support of the government
including the establishment of industrial parks in the outer parts of cities.
External parts of cities in which more land is available, absorb extra
national investment and cooperation for industrial development. Hence they
cause foreign investments to flow and be accepted.
Global consolidation has affected the
model of production development and production companies are formed around the
central nucleus of cities.
The flow of foreign direct investment in
industrial cities of Bangkok and Jakarta has led to a city shape in which
industrial development has taken place in the suburb or outside the margin of
cities, and commercial development in the centers of cities. Other cities like
Shanghai have gone through similar transformations. This kind of development
is different from development of capital exporting cities.
Conclusion:
Various urban models in the
globalization era point to the fact that along with the new international
division of labor, capital goes to regions that enjoy relative advantages and
have rich information infrastructure at their disposal. These regions are
converted into extensive urban areas or communication and management knots of
global networks, and form the nervous system of the international economic
system.
The socially and economically
underdeveloped regions which lack desirable infrastructure and skilled and
efficient manpower and cannot substitute fiber optics for copper cables, which
cannot attract capital and industries that are necessary for their
developmental survival and as the result, cannot get information about new
technology and new scientific achievement and new concepts that emerge in big
urban centers, will be highly vulnerable.
Any efforts made to ignore these
realities instead of accommodating them in order to meet social needs and
contain existing conflicts will inevitably lead to the widening of the gap
between realities and urban theories, and in this connection the
underdeveloped countries will be the ultimate losers. |
