The City and the World is a collection of articles about New York's prospects as a global city in the 21st century, edited by Margaret E. Crahan and Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush. The contributions are made by Carol O'Cleireacain, Rae D. Rosen and Reagan Murray, Edward Mozley Roche, Clifford Krauss, Peter Andreas, Joseph J. Salvo and Arun Peter Lobo, Robert C. Smith, Josh DeWind, Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, Jay Kaplan, and Saskia Sassen. The topics the book deals with span a wide range including the city's fiscal situation, the role of new communications technology, immigration, religion, and reflects at each point the importance of the growing interdependence between New York City and international markets.
The thread which holds all these articles together is rather obvious, although somewhat tenuous: how will New York's growing incorporation into a global market affect the city in the future? The different angles which the authors take on this question, however, do not hold the book together as a coherent discussion of any particular topic, and a couple of the writers focus almost exclusively on general national trends with only the most cursory look at New York. Two common points seemed to surface repeatedly, though: the need for quality education and the desireability of a more active role for the city government with a more comprehensive role with other jurisdictions and levels of government.
O'Cleireacain focuses mainly on the erosion of New York City's tax base, especially the losses due to transnational firms accounting their costs away to tax havens. She also notes the danger of overreliance on Wall Street and FIRE firms for taxes, as incomes from these sectors can be volatile, leaving the city in a vulnerable budget situation, concluding that "The city has become increasingly dependent on a narrower and more mobile tax base than is healthy." (p. 33) She makes a rather unprogressive argument that the real estate taxes need to be reformed, as they put too much weight on commercial owners and not enough on homeowners. It is unfair, she claims, that while homeowners own 40% of the value of real estate in the city, they only pay 12% of the taxes, forcing commercial owners, with 30% of the value to pay half the taxes. She then goes on to argue that city government needs to form more active public-private partnerships to promote economic growth. This partnership would require the government to offer competitive taxes, add value through services and actively facilitate growth. She also highlights the need for education to create a pool of attractive labor.
While there are appropriate concerns about the tax base for New York City, I do not recognize any wisdom on shifting taxes to homeowners. It seems to me that by undermining the affordability of housing in New York, which is already notoriously high, shifting the burden to the housing market would do more to discourage companies from locating in New York because of the difficulty of finding workers who could afford the market. Furthermore, while education is an ongoing concern in cities and deserves to be listed among the priorities in the future of any city, I feel uncomfortable when academics begin treating education as nothing more than another commodity. Apparently the role of citizens with the faculty of critical thinking does not figure into the common thinking on the competitiveness of cities.
Rosen and Murray similarly advocate New York taking a more active role in Washington to open foreign markets for Wall Street finance. There is no discussion of the effects of forcing open third world markets, and no discussion of using the seat of the United Nations as a venue for promoting more balanced trade options so that New York does not see itself forced to compete with other cities by running over delicate developing markets. The concept of New York taking a more active role in international politics is compelling, I just have a problem with it catering to the large multinational corporations instead of looking into the interests of an economic system which will be stable in the long-term.
Following this argument was the article by Roche, who states:
Multinationals have concluded, in their calculation of location
economics, that cities can be played off, one against the other.
[...] As a result, an important strategy of economic development
for cities is the reengineering of their factor endowments to
attract investements by multinational corporations.
(p. 56)
Instead of arguing for lower taxes, he encourages government subsidization
of services which will attract corporate investment. This is entirely
appropriate to the extent that such services also provide benefits to the
city's residents, like his example of improved education. When the
services benefit just the corporations, however, this simply becomes
another example of the ability of corporations to extract resources from
cities.
It would be nice if Roche, Rosen and Murray could put their heads together and encourage New York politicians to push in Washington for better education and more comprehensive planning controls to help curb the ability of multinational corporations to play cities against one another in tax cuts.
Krauss looks into the ways in which the Cali Cartel operates in New York, largely utilizing the increased availability of transportation and better communications technology. He does a reasonably good job at drawing the connection between this international drug ring and the local economy in Jackson Heights, and concludes that given the sophistication of the operation, especially in light of the improvements in communications, better coordination between federal and local drug enforcement agencies is needed. While this is interesting, and does have some ties to globalization, it does not seem to fit in much with the rest of the articles, except the following article by Andreas.
Andreas does fit well with Krauss, but does not deal with New York City. It instead looks at international crime in general. He comes up with the (not so novel) insight that drug trafficking follows the logic of neoclassical economics that each country should try to capitalize on its competitive advantages. When looking at the increased levels of globalization, "[t]he illegal side of the international economy should be seen as an integral part of this process." (p. 83)
These two provide an interesting angle on the spatial development of immigrant neighborhoods. The emphasis again comes down to a more comprehensive approach to dealing with problems arising from growing transnational ties.
Salvo and Lobo look into immigration, seeing it largely as a factor mitigating the depopulation of central cities as people move to the suburbs. As they point out, this helps maintain the tax base as well as preventing excessive vacancies and deteriorated housing. What they do not mention, however, is that by creating ethnically marked communities where others may not feel comfortable, their large settlement of the central city may discourage more affluent people from living there, thereby helping erode the tax base. They may, in fact, present one more force encouraging population to move out of the city.
Smith, also deals with immigrants, looking into the ways in which the
current wave of immigration differs from the last at the beginning of the
twentieth century. He finds that while the current immigrants account for
a smaller percentage of the population, they are an appreciable presence.
The truly notable point, however, is their more transnational nature.
Improved transportation and communication allows immigrants to maintain an
active role in their communities of origin. Suscinctly, Smith says:
While Italians may have had such inclinations, the fact that they
could not go home for the weekend or negotiate with their
counterparts in the village via speaker phone as do the
Ticuanenses today makes the quality and quantity of relations on
the micro level quite different from those of the past.
Coming back to the importance of education, he notes that immigrant
children often end up in poor schools that frustrate their ambitions.
Nonwhite immigrants, further face racism.
DeWind picks up on this point, looking into the performance of immigrant children in school. He identifies better rates of improvement by immigrant children than by native minority groups. He attributes this to a more optimistic view of education on the part of immigrants as opposed to native minorities, who view schools as an attempt to erase their culture without conferring any means of social advancement. While I do not doubt that there is an element of truth in this view, I do not believe that the "improvements" DeWind sees would to stand up as a legitimate effect. They appear to be the effect of initial improvements as immigrants first become more familiar with the new system as opposed to an intrinsic difference in their educational outlook. His theory that progress slows down after immigrants have been here a few years because they adopt a more negative outlook seems to be supporting a poor hypothesis. A more straightforward explanation could be that their initial progress reflects gains in understanding their new school environment instead of actual academic achievement. At any rate, the recommendation that techniques used for immigrant students should be used for native minorities seems to have an uncomfortable possibility of reinforcing the alienation of minority groups by removing them from the main-stream.
Looking into religion in New York, Stevens-Arroyo finds that religious
institutions serve a role in maintaining cultural identities as well
as dealing with the urban problems posed by globalization. He has two
statements in particular which make these points:
Parishes and congregations in New York become agents for
preserving the immigrants' languages, promoting ethnic traditions
through esthetically satisfying public celebrations, organizing
neighborhoods for material survival, and reinforcing a
transnational identity.
(p. 151)
Indeed, the multiple impacts of this phenomenon [globalization] on
cities such as New York, including job displacement, increased
unequal distribution of income, declines in real wages, and
pressures on the city's tax base and hence on city services, are
requiring more nongovernmental responses. It is not surprising
that religious institutions, communities, and individuals are
organizing to deal with current problems. In so doing, they are
demonstrating a creative dynamism that may transform the face of
New York and the role of religion within it in the twenty-first
century.
(p. 156)
There has been discussion before about religion becoming a larger part of
cultural identity as other aspects are eroded by globalization. The role
of religious institutions as agents acting to counter other trends
affecting cities, however, is an interesting development in this line of
investigation.
Kaplan comes across more as a booster than as an analyst of New York City.
Claiming:
New York City enjoyed uncontested primacy among America's cultural
centers from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of
the twentieth. In almost every area of artistic and public
intellectual life, it played a central, dominant, or exclusive
role. Following the Second World War, New York City grew into a
position of global leadership, so that today it has arguably
become first among the world's cultural centers.
While New York has been a very important city on the cultural scene, there
is a good degree of exageration in this claim. New York has long had to
share control, at least in terms of popular culture, with Hollywood.
Kaplan tries to feebly pass this off by pointing out that some of the
financing for Hollywood films comes from New York and is thereby subject
to cultural control. This does not really explain the situation, however.
Financial investment is based mostly on a basis of profitability, the
artistic and cultural decisions are made by the directors and producers in
Hollywood. Furthermore, it does not give enough importance to the
influence movies and television have had on American culture, establishing
norms on everything from diamond wedding rings to a nationally accepted
accent. The fashion parade at the Oscars is probably more important than
New York runways in setting national trends or sparking discussions. The
role of Boston in higher education and of Chicago in architecture are
yet more examples of important elements of America's cultural life that
have long resided outside New York City. Furthermore, claiming that New
York outranks Paris as a cultural center is a difficult argument at best,
and one that is unlikely to be accepted anywhere outside the United
States.
The point he makes on New York changing from a local experiential culture to one which is mass-marketed and largely outwardly defined, however, is an astute observation which deserves credit.
Finally, the book closes with an article by Saskia Sassen (in what seems to be a transparent ploy of putting her article at the end in the hopes that the reader would actually wade through the rest of the book to see what she had to say). She raises two interesting points: the concentration of decision making in New York as producer services grow at the same time manufacturing is declining, and the expansion of transnational sectors making it difficult for other sectors to compete for space and capital. Given this picture, New York needs to moderate its efforts to utilize its competitive advantages with its needs for other services needed to support its residents, who are, after all the workers of the firms the city wants to attract.
This collection of articles provides some good glimpses into the trends shaping New York at the beginning of the 21st century. Instead of tailoring efforts to fully accomodating transnational firms, as most of the authors suggest, however, I believe efforts should be directed more toward ensuring that New York be a city that works for its residents. This has an impact on attracting firms as well, since a city which has a low quality of life or excessive living expenses will not be able to attract firms because of the difficulty of attracting a workforce. The recommendations for more government collaboration are to the point, as more power needs to be given to some sort of regional authority to help deal with structural problems which are undermining American cities. At the same time, New York should advocate national controls over subsidies provided to businesses to locate (through the powers granted Congress to control interstate commerce) to ensure it can compete with other cities without participating in a race to the bottom.