New York a global city

TISSOT Mélissa

Thursday 10th January 2019

How can New York City be considered a global city ?

        Nowadays, loads of cities are phagocyting their region ; but we can't consider them as a global city even though they're well-known all over the world. The first source is a photogaph taken in 2017 by Jason Hawkes, an aerial photographer. This picture, shows us Manhattan by night. Manhattan is one of the richest disctrict of New York City. Whereas, the second source is a text published in 2015 in the Routledge International Handbook of World-System Analysis and written by M. Timberlake and D. A. Smith, two geographers, working at Cambridge University. Thanks to their writtings we can have a brief insight of what a global city is. According to them a global city is a city that is large in term of population, that concentrates the economic, the political and the cultural functions but which is also a hub. With these two documents and our knowledge, we'll try to prove that New York City can be considered as a global city or not. First of all we'll explain why is New York City a hub and then we'll show that New York City concentrates the political, the economic and the cultural functions. Finally we'll shine a light on the fact that New York City has an influence, that last decade on different scales.

        First and foremost, thanks to the second source, we learnt that a global city must have “transportation hubs, such as large airports“ . New York City is connected to the world through two international airports ( JFK international airport and La Guardia airport ). New York welcomes more than 8 million inhabitant and most of them work or need to travel through the city. These commuters need transportation networks to come by the city in the morning and to leave in the evening. Thanks to New York City's transportation network, the inhabitant can enjoy the many railroads, they can also use roads to reach Manhattan throught the Linoln tunnel or across bridges such as the one we can glimpse on the right hand side of the photograph from the first source. New York City offers an important bus system to its citizens. Although, they can use the Subway which connects the five Manhattan borough or they still can take the yellow ferries, which sail on New York City's numerous canals that we can notice on the photograph by Jason hawkes. People often use the yellow ferries because it's one of the cheapest and fastest way to cross New York. New York also “generates” new transportation network which are more sustainable like new bikelanes, this project shows that New York City is an avant-gardist concern by the future of the planet.  

        Secondly, according to the text “The key network of a global city fall into few functional categories” such as economic, political and cultural functions. The city of more than 8 million inhabitant does concentrates all of these “key networks”. First, New York City has a political function because it hosts the United Nations' headquarters (that we can see on the right bank side on the photograh from the first source). New York is the capital of the United Nation nor the capital of the United States of America. Big Apple, has also an economic function. It concentrates two central business disctricts ; one is located in Manhattan : around the Empire State Building. We can see it on the first source, in the background of the photograph. The other, is downtown in Wall Street. Wall Street is New York City' stock market. This city, is where main globalisation decisions are taken and hosts many TNC's headquaters (transnational companies), like GPMorgan (bank) or Thomas Reuteus (Media). Wall Street also hosts the treasure department that fixes the amount of the dollar. That's not all ; New York City also has a major cultural function. Big Apple, is the third film city in the world, and has several known universities like Columbia (IVY League), New York University, Julliard... New York is also famous for art and danse with Broadway and the Metropolitan Opera, New York Ballet or the Rockfeller center and the many art galleries that you can find all over the city.

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