Cities in a transnational world Alok Kothari – Housing &Urbanism – 2012/13 Architectural Association School of Architecture, London
firms. Converging talented people and enhanced technical connectivity at a single place – the city, is seen as the most effective and easy way of anticipating and tackling the problems.15 One more reason which supports this is the presence of a strong labour force in the city region. The flexibility that is facilitated in hiring and retaining the best employees and also for getting and changing a job for an employee is much higher in the cities as compared to the remote areas. 16The competition thus created gives a larger pool of selection both to the employee and the employer and hence attracts the firms and the labour force to the city. As per the above observations, the revolution in information technology and communications which has restructured the world economy by increasing the scale and intensity of financial transactions has helped cities emerge as the territorial nodes. Cities have become the places which facilitate the merger of all the common resources essential to reap in the benefits of this technological revolution and manage the risk factors associated with it.17 Employment restructuring & polarisation: Throughout history, any technological change has brought with it certain qualities that modify and alter the existing social structure of the society. Even today, with the advent of the information technology, the cities are experiencing a change in their employment and occupational pattern.18 For instance during 17th and 19th century, a virtuous model of a city was developed in England due to the agricultural and industrial revolution i.e. due to agricultural revolution the number of people required in the countryside for farming reduced which forced the people to move to the cities where industrial revolution had increased the number of jobs. Similarly, today the rapid entry of the finance and service industry in the city, favoured by the connectivity and capital mobility provided by information technology, has recomposed the employment structure. The result of this restructuring is the reduction of jobs in the manufacturing industry and increase of those in the finance and service sectors. Also, the increasing use of information technology in factories and offices has raised the fear of unemployment (manual work being replaced by machines) in the minds of the workers. This issue has been debated over the centuries whenever there was a technological progress that provided efficient tools of production over labour. 19For example, in the period from 1780 – 1988, the number of people engaged in agriculture in Britain reduced to half of the total labour force but the productivity per capita increased by a factor of 68; but if we analyse the after effects of this increase in productivity, it is seen that it facilitated the growth of manufacturing and services due to the reinvestment of capital and labour.20 Today what we are witnessing is the repetition of the same logic when we shift from an economy dominated by the manufacturing industry to a one dominated by service industry.
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Saskia Sassen (2012) - Cities in a world economy – pg. 222,223 Paul Hirst (2005) - Space and Power – Pg. 16-17 17 Saskia Sassen (2012) - Cities in a world economy – pg. 223 18 Manuel Castells (2010) - The rise of the network society – Pg. 217 19 Manuel Castells (2010) - The rise of the network society – Pg. 267 20 Manuel Castells (2010) - The rise of the network society – Pg. 267 16
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