Inequality in Global City-Regions

Abstract

Within the developed countries, business and governmental leaders of large cities typically aspire to reach global-city status. Yet no convincing evidence shows that the inhabitants of global cities and their surrounding regions fare better than the residents of lesser places. Indeed “the globalcity hypothesis” argues that these metropolises are especially prone to extremes of inequality (Friedmann 1986). Despite being, in aggregate, the wealthiest areas of their respective nations, global-city regions tend to have large, dense groups of very poor people, often living in close juxtaposition with concentrations of the extraordinarily wealthy. According to Sassen (1991), the particular industrial and occupational structure of global cities produces a bifurcated earnings structure that in turn creates the outcome of the “disappearing middle”. This paper shows that global-city regions in wealthy countries do display high levels of income inequality (although not necessarily of class polarization), but that the explanation given by global-city theorists in terms of earnings is not wholly satisfactory. It further indicates that the five wealthy global-city regions of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, and the Randstad (Netherlands) vary in terms of the extent of inequality. It concludes by examining the reasons for inequality in such regions and the effects of public policy on it.