Spaces аnd Exchanges

Spaces and Exchanges

Our modern, western societies are shaped by the geographic, symbolic spaces they occupy and by the way they open these spaces to what lies further away. We are now living in a globalized and open world, a world of free-trade where most of the states guarantee the free-movement of people. These spaces and exchanges are defined by global cities, which influence global affairs in term of economic, political, cultural and social matters.

However, how do these global cities influence international exchanges and the spaces they are bound to?

First, we'll see that global cities can have positive effects, but they are also a source of problems. Finally, we'll try to discuss about the future of these global cities.

Global cities have changed people everyday's life because of their evolution and their privileged place in globalization.

The access to services, to culture or education is much easier than it was in the 50's-60's. More schools, universities, libraries and museums have been built in order to improve the global cities' education service. In addition to this improvement of education, there are more jobs opportunities in global cities because they are dynamic hubs that attract multinational companies.

These cities are also connected to the rest of the world due to their international airports or harbours, developing the exchanges of people and products with other areas of the world. They have also created and improved the public means of transports like the subway, the buses...

These global cities are also full of architectural, cultural, ethnical and religious diversities. For instance, in Toronto, half of the population is borned outside Canada.

Despite all these improvements of everyday's life for the citizens, global cities also face numerous and huge problems, which sometimes threaten people's health. The recurring problems are pollution, congestion and overcrowding. For instance, London had to cope with the Great Smog in December 1952, which was caused by the factories located in the suburbs. As a result, 4000 people died prematurely and 100.000 were made ill because of the smog.

Furthermore, as global cities attract people from all areas and from all social class, global cities may have high criminality rates. Ethnic gangs battle out, for various reasons, threatening people’s life : in Chicago for example, the murder rate was of 34 for 100,000 inhabitants in 1991, which sullys Chicago’s image.

Nevertheless, global cities try to cope with these tremendous problems in order to attract more and more people and keep their clean image. They try to improve the quality of life by preserving the environment. London, as a consequence of the Great Smog, decided to establish the clean air act in 1952 in order to prevent another catastrophe. They also installed a congestion charge in London to reduce the release of greenhouse gases.

To conclude, global cities have both positive and negative aspects on people's everyday life. They improve

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