The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo [Hardcover]

Saskia Sassen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1991

Massive and parallel changes have occurred in New York City since the late 1970s and in London and Tokyo since the early 1980s. What transformed these urban centers, with their diverse histories, into "global cities" that share comparable economic and social structures? Saskia Sassen argues that their remarkable similarity arises from their position as command posts in international finance and advanced services for business. Massive and parallel changes have occurred in New York City since the late 1970s and in London and Tokyo since the early 1980s. What transformed these urban centers, with their diverse histories, into "global cities" that share comparable economic and social structures? Saskia Sassen argues that their remarkable similarity arises from their position as command posts in international finance and advanced services for business.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is brilliant stuff, both in its broadness of sociological scope and its voluminous collection of data from a vast number of sources in the three cities. -- Scott Lash, The Times Higher Education Supplement

A very significant book indeed. . . . A systematic detailed analysis of the three largest urban economies in the advanced world. -- Peter Hall, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

[A] high-powered and at times horrific book. Sassen shows how dangerously city life has been affected by the influx of employees of the multinational firms which move into major cities and virtually colonize them, riving even greater wedges between the rich and poor. -- The Observer

A landmark study in the political economy of cities. -- Anthony King, Newsline

The most detailed and sophisticated anatomy yet published of the functioning of the new producer services sector in the global economy. -- Mark Levine, Urban Affairs Quarterly

The implications of Sassen's research . . . are sobering. -- Rudolf Klein, Times Literary Supplement

An exciting and persuasive work. It incorporates a herculean research effort. -- Susan Fainstein, Journal of the American Planning Association

A multi-disciplinary tour de force that should be read not only by regional economists but also by urban geographers, sociologists, and planners. -- Development and Change --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Saskia Sassen is Professor of Sociology and of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Her other books include Guests and Aliens, The Mobility of Labor and Capital, Losing Control, and Globalization and Its Discontents. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr (August 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691078661
• ISBN-13: 978-0691078663
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,662,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com).

Her new books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2008) and A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007). Other recent books are the 3rd. fully updated Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2006), the edited Deciphering the Global (Routledge 2007), and the co-edited Digital Formations: New Architectures for Global Order (Princeton University Press 2005). She has just completed for UNESCO a five-year project on sustainable human settlement with a network of researchers and activists in over 30 countries; it is published as one of the volumes of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers) [http://www.eolss.net ]. The Global City came out in a new fully updated edition in 2001.

Her books are translated into twentyone languages. She has received several honors and awards, most recently a doctor honoris causa from Delft University and DePaul University. She serves on several editorial boards and is an advisor to several international bodies. She is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities, and chaired the Information Technology and International Cooperation Committee of the Social Science Research Council (USA). She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International, OpenDemocracy.net, Vanguardia, Clarin, the Financial Times, HuffingtonPost.com, among others.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, July 2, 2000

By 

Hakan ALTINTAS (TURKEY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Global City (Paperback)

This book is a profound empirical assessment of the changes that have taken place in the world economy since the sixties and the emerging role of core cities therein. One of the more significant changes in the world economy has been, according to the author, that manufacturing activities have been spatially dispersed while at the same time production-related services such as finance, accounting, and management have been spatially centralized. It is this 'combination of spatial dispersion and global integration [that] has created a new strategic role' [p. 3] for such cities as New York, London, and Tokyo. They have become global cities, i.e., 'postindustrial production sites' for a variety of command functions that integrate the global economy in the post Bretton-Woods era. An immense volume of data is presented to substantiate the hypothesis that these three cities, diverse as their historical, cultural, political and economic settings are, have undergone similar transformations: their economic base has shifted from manufacturing to services, in particular to producer services (chs. 5,7); agglomeration economies in favour of these global cities induced the urban hierarchy to become more top-heavy in the U.S., Great Britain, and Japan, respectively (ch. 6); and their urban social structure is characterized by increasing income and employment polarization since there is complementary expansion of jobs at the top-level and in the informal economy (chs. 8,9). Quantitative indicators, almost by definition, do not suffice to vindicate such far-reaching conclusions. Some of them rely on a questionable notion of what is normal, e.g., the indicators of these cities' 'disproportionate share' in worldwide capitalization of equities, due to their stockmarkets, or the 'overrepresentation' of the financial industries' assets and income in these cities [pp. 171-179]. But what is normal about the value of equities and banks' assets being proportional to city size? Other indicators do not necessarily support the hypothesis forwarded. The conclusion that 'the salient difference' between the three global cities and other major cities 'is the extent of concentration of the producer services and finance' [p. 326] is undermined by the observation 'that the producer services as a whole have grown rapidly over the last decade and that they have grown more rapidly in the countries as a whole than in these cities' [p. 138]. The evidence thus suggests that the 'salient difference' may be a temporary phenomenon and can hardly serve to characterize global cities in general. However, these are minor objections against some empirical arguments in favour of the Global City hypothesis. The author, Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University, provides much more qualitative and quantitative evidence to substantiate her case. It is the outcome of work for years, in collaboration with an impressive number of other reserachers and institutions. And apart from the attempt to empirical verification, there is also a theoretical framework which supports the Global City hypothesis. The study contributes to an emerging literature on' the social geography of advanced economies' [p. 251] in the classical tradition of political economy. It deviates from orthodox classical or Marxist theory in that the iron law of falling profits is modified by the notion of capitalist 'regimes' or 'models of growth' which are able to restore profit-generating opportunities on a global scale. Fordism has been the last fully articulated regime, charcterized by 'capital intensity, standardization of production, and suburbanization-led growth' [p. 331]. The present work on global cities thus amounts to search for the new 'form of economic growth' and its sustainability [p. 12], based on speculative finance, shift to a service economy, and inner city growth. Even if one does not share this theoretical background and the preoccupation with questions of how durable a particular phase of capitalism is, SASSEN's book proofs tiffs perspective to be a useful device to focus a study of rather complex issues. Moreover, there is abundance of material which should be of interest to the more orthodox-minded economist. Just to mention two examples: the paradox of financial market deregulation being motivated by the need of governments to finance ever larger deficits [pp. 88, 118]; or descriptions of processes in global labor markets [p. 31 ] and urban economics [p. 126] which extend COASE's logic of the firm, though not mentioned, to new fields of study. This is clearly an outstanding book, an authoritative study of the subject and yet stimulating reading for further theoretical and empirical research on major cities and the world economy.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid reference work, March 18, 2003

By 

Mats Frick (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. (Paperback)

Sassen aims to - unpack the concept of "the city" (p. xviii) - as a unit of analysis in sociology and economics from a global perspective. The scope of this endeavor is quite staggering and she has to bring an number of different fields under the same conceptual umbrella in order to capture the elusive character of 'the city'. Her method is the painstaking analysis of a huge amount of data from a vast array of sources. This might seem unnecessary to some people who are more interested in bold visions of the future á la Manuel Castells or Antonio Negri. The thing about Castells or Negri though is that you need a leap of faith to interpret the world according to their views. Sassen is more boring to read but one can always rely on her providing the data leading up to her conclusions. This is crucial to anyone wanting to take a stab at the interdisciplinary phenomenon of the global city and use availible data for comparison. The thorough research foundation of the book makes it easy to link the issues to areas that otherwise would be quite far apart such as urban planning and service management. Personally I think the most important message is that place and location matters maybe even more nowadays than it used to when production and consumption was explicitly bound by the physical limitations of our world.

In all I think that this book is a must read for anyone even remotely interested i urban matters. It's a bit tough to get through though and the visual presentation of the data could have been better, hence rendering the book a four rather than a five star grade.

29 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars History was VERY unkind to this book...., September 19, 2004

By 

Hiroo Yamagata (Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. (Paperback)

This is a sad book. History was very unkkind to this woman. Just when she thought she completed here masterpiece, a book that was supposed to ensure her tenure and fame and all the things that a sociologist may want, everything blew up in her face.

Her theory in the original version went like this; Why oh why are there huge concentration of functions in Tokyo, London, New York, when so much IT allows easier communication and remote office and all that? Why do these cities grow, when all the production and other functions gets shipped off to backwater countries?

Well, she said, IT allowed the separation of production and management/development. That's why managers remain in cities with their high pay, while actual sweat work goes to third world child labor under measly wages.

But why did the cities grow bigger? Well, because cities are the new production centers. Management and stuff requires a lot of legal services and accountants and other services etc that are much easily available in the cities. That's why all those management stuff accumulated in the city.

But aren't those activites just leeches to the actual job? They don't create any new value, do they? Aha, she says. But they do! Look at all those financial innovations, like hedge funds and derivatives and stuff! Look how much money they are making! They are not leeches, they are creating new values. You gotta throw away your old ideas about the economy! Only cities can produce that sort of new financial products, and that's why London, NY, Tokyo are growing!

There was another brownie point. Her theory went very well with shallow anti-globalism arguments. Managers stay in NY/London with high pays, while at the factories half way around the globe, workers suffer forever under low wage.

But exactly when the first edition came out, everything changed.

First was the collapse of the Japanese economy, that took down Tokyo with it. Her theory had nothing to prepare or explain this. What happened to the new production? What happened to all those financial innovation? Why didn't that work in Tokyo? In the book, Sassen tries to answer this using various ad-hoc excuses, but the more she does it, the less convincing the original proposition becomes. So it wasn't THAT important, after all? All those theories of yours were only subordinate to those other stuff that you never mentioned before?

And yes, what about those innovations? Collapse of LTCM and huge hedge funds etc. since the first edition made finance less glamorous. Arbitrage does increase some efficiency of the market, which does create some value. But they were not the major new "product" to sustain the world.

Her theory about the separation of production and management wasn't so hot afterall. Look at Asia, look at China! Concentration of production functions REQUIRED many management and design / development functions to go along with them. Also, the factories did make the workers richer, and as a result, much of Asia and China really became better off. There are dicrepancies, and differences in earnings, but its nothing like what Sassen had described.

It's amazing that NOTHING of here original theory remained. In this second version, she tries to pick up the pieces, but they are too completely destroyed to be picked up, and the effort is almost painful to read. I wonder why she even bothered with the second edition. It's not a book worth salvaging in 2001, and it's hardly worth reading, except as a sad but amusing look back at the strange ideas of the past.