Capitalistic And Second Cities

1. Introduction

Cities are being stretched to their limits.

By 2050, the world population will double and assuming four people per family, additional 2 billion ‘houses’ of various types will be needed.

Cities in both the developed and the developing world are increasingly facing problems with their existing systems of tackling issues of catering for the influx of all their habitants and refining their community structure.

The developed cities are coming to terms with fact that the environments they are creating are only increasing the experience of social deprivation, but it is the rapidly expanding cities of the developing world that the crisis of the poor is expanding all the faster. If undeterred, the social as well as the ecological problems will soon dominate the global scene.

This dissertation will attempt to explore the urban scene, at it’s current state, and also discuss how  the major cities of our times are changing to meet the requirements of the capitalistic world.

Questions will be asked on why urban sprawl and decentralization have been largely frowned upon by the advocates of urban planning, and why ‘second cities’ may be the next step forward in attempting to balance out the supply and demand of contemporary cities.

2. Capitalistic Cities

Capitalistic cities emerged in the mid-1980s as a dominant force since they serve as the link between the national and the global economies.  As more states opened up to international markets, their leading business and financial centres started to function as global cities.  To date, there are an estimated 40 of such capitalistic or mega cities, up from a handful in the mid-1980s.  This has inevitably lead to the increase of property prices and incomes in such cities.[1]

These cities promise opportunities for fame and fortune, but it also creates the physical framework for an urban community.  Cities have grown and changed into such complex and capital orientated structures, that in many ways, it has lost it’s meaning in social welfare and the ways in which people work as a team and moreover- a single community. Nowadays, it seems that most occupants within the city have naturally lost expectation of the word ‘community’ to be found in the city scene.  Generally, people fail to see community as a vital necessity in their every day lives. Either they have not experienced it before, or don’t really think it’s a luxury they can afford within their given urban environment. The competitiveness, the environment of making profit and the shear will to succeed in their specializations are the concerns that gives no time for the social city.

3. Chaos and Order in a Systemized City

The growth of capitalistic cities may simply be explained by this principle: when people cluster in one place, they all become more productive.  And the place itself becomes much more productive as well since collective creativity grows exponentially.  Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas dubbed these forces as “human capital externalities.”[2]

One of the most significant results of capitalism is the growth of urbanism.  The future of humanity has constantly been regarded as an urban arena.  Urban management has brought about the emergence of capitalistic cities and metropolises on a scale unprecedented in human history.  Most capitalistic cities are found in the developing world, and their growth has been extraordinarily rapid.  This places enormous stress on the city’s administrative capacities, physical infrastructures, and environmental resources are oftentimes very fragile.[3]

The general rule is that the most complex and international services (such as high-end law, accounting, finance and management) congregate in the centre, while most standardized and national segments of these very same services get farmed out to midsize cities.  This helps explain the increasing wealth advantage of capitalistic cities.  The earnings of high-level professional jobs have grown the fastest in capitalistic cities. As stated in The Evening Standard, the most read newspaper in London the average salary for the employers in the ‘Square Mile’ (the main hub of London’s finance) is approximately 88,000 pounds, according to the Office for National Statistics.[4]

The growing number of multinationals intensifies the competition in all foreign markets, and the prices multinationals are willing to pay for the advantage in those markets.  Those premiums go to the capitalistic cities, since they have virtual monopoly centres for financial, legal, and accounting innovations in the most complex segments of the knowledge economy.  This explains why, for instance, the recent acquisition of a share of the London Stock Exchange, would be conducted in London, rather than a city such as Birmingham.[5]

According to a UN People and Planet reports, by 2007 3.2 billion people will live in cities.  Developing countries are expected to absorb nearly all of the world’s population increases between today and 2030.  The estimated urban growth rate of 1.8 percent for the period between 2000 and 2030 will double the number of city dwellers, whereas rural populations are hardly growing at all.[6]  By 2050, an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas, creating even more pressure on the space infrastructure and resources of cities, leading to social disintegration and horrific urban poverty.[7]

The reality of capitalistic cities is poorly known since, in addition to the speed of their transformations, these cities also remain difficult to apprehend in statistical terms.  A capitalistic city such as London is usually associated with fortune, fame, and the future. In a social sense, unfortunately it is not an understatement to state that these 3fs are the primary driving force that determines the capitalistic city.

Problems with the Capitalistic City

Amidst the capitalistic and competitive atmosphere, people have grown numb to the fact that their environment needs change. Ignorance has got the better of them, to see that their inputs into the cityscape can change their surroundings for the better.

Surveying a total of hundred people and asking what crosses their mind, when thinking about the city, the most frequent answers were the “tall buildings and heavy congested traffic”  (see appendix for questionnaire). I was not at all surprised that they did not mention nor come close to stating answers such as- parks, streets or squares. When asking about their experiences about city life, the answers were becoming an overwhelming repetition of pollution, alienation, and congestion. It does not seem to bother them that they are entitled to generate words such as participation, communication, beauty or pleasure. The norm is to view the concepts of ‘city’ and ‘quality of life’ as being incompatible. Simply, people don’t think they do not fall into the same category as each other.

Cities have been stripped of their identity of integrating people of all kinds. Rather, the focus has been drawn into meeting the requirements of the commercial and political organizations. The pursuit to fulfil their narrow objectives has in turn taken away so much of the city’s vitality.

Consider the case of London, as an example of a capitalistic or mega city bursting at the seams.  For four centuries, London was one of the seats of power and prosperity, as can be seen in its architecture, parks, squares, museums and public institutions.  However, urban policies laid down in London were designed mainly to empower the market, and not the people.  As a result, the city has failed to safeguard the quality of life of its citizens and its public transport system.  London has even shown itself incapable of even competing with other British cities in hosting international events.  By merely focusing on the development of the city for profit alone, London has lost its sense of unity, direction, and pride.  In addition to that, the city is also greatly polluted.[8]

Mega cities are increasingly polarizing society into segregated communities. Within the city, conflicts between citizens, seclusion of private guarded territories, segregating rich from poor and dissecting groups into their own different classes.  Capitalistic cities an ironically be compared with ‘the huge superstores’ such as Tescos or Morrisons where you find all kinds of products under a single roof, yet all the items within the store are separated into their own separate sections and designated isles. The frozen foods are in their individual compartments, the crisps are separated from the bread products. Under the roof of the city, you will be able to find a similar continuous pattern, where the rich are segregated from the poor, and the areas with the ethnic minorities having a distinct red line drawn to differentiate their districts over the citizenship holders.  Increasingly within the city, people with different backgrounds, class, and religions seem to be displaced away from each other, and put into their own distinct social spaces.

It seems that supermarkets aren’t the only system that tries to achieve maximum profit. The city is being viewed as an arena for consumerism. It has become a space for political and commercial importance where individual needs by far out weighs the needs of the society.   Craving for private consumption has taken over concept of sharing of products or spaces. As individuals wish for their own personal goods, the amount of wastes are accumulating more than ever. People are creating and using up their spaces to suit their interests and intentions, wasted space, or ‘single-minded’ spaces are being created.

Single Minded Space & Open Minded Space

This result is due to the lack of vitality of our urban spaces. The political theorist Michael Walzer classified urban space into two distinct groups: ‘single-minded’ and ‘open-minded’ spaces.

‘Single-minded’ describes a concept of urban space that serves a single function, and it is generally a space created with not much thought behind the process of design and planning. In direct contrast, ‘open-minded’ space is multifunctional where it has been designed to suit various purposes and a mix of variety of people.

Example of ‘single-minded’ space is the business district, industrial zone, shopping mall, the roundabout, car parks and even the car itself. But the ‘open-minded’ spaces are the parks, squares, courtyards, pavement cafes. A space where we can linger and relax, reflect upon the given environment- a space where we become more willing to participate and spend time in.

At first glance, open-minded space could seem to be the answer to solve the integral community problems within the city, but we cannot simply exclude ‘single-minded’ spaces as they provide us with our own private space and cater the craving for private consumption. They are very efficient, in those terms.  In contrast, ‘open- minded’ places gives everyone another kind of satisfaction. A much greater satisfaction in terms of bringing diverse sections of society together, and allow a sense of tolerance, awareness, identity and mutual respect.

Although both sides do play a vital role in the urban environment, increasingly we are only catering for the increasing private demands and thus the ‘open- minded’ spaces have given way to ‘single- minded’ spaces. As a result we are already experiencing a city that has become unavoidably selfish in its nature and the idea of the inclusive city is being destroyed.

Community is being segregated by these concepts of ‘single-minded’ urban generation, where profitability is the main priority and maximum output in terms of individual revenues. The ever increasing emphasis is given more on selfishness and separation rather than contact and community.

In John Urry’s book Consuming Passions, Judith Williamson (1995) stated that “ The walkman is a vivid symbol of our time. It provides a concrete image of alienation, suggesting an implicit hostility to, and isolation from, the environment in which it is worn.”[9]

When the Walkman was introduced by Sony, it was a medium where it allowed a closed-minded space between the wearer, and the existing social environment.   As we have become accustomed to the privatization of social space, this interpretation of the walkman may sound extreme, but this piece of technology has privatized sound and in turn privatized space, in the public domain. As the wearer has been buffered out from their environment, in turn, they would make “no input into the social arena, no speech, no reaction, no intervention.” into the world outside of its earphones.[10]

The idea of the close-minded spaces can also be applied here, where their participation would be limited in the communal spaces and the experience of the walkman would only be accustomed only to the listener, not a shared experience.  The developments of technology from the Walkman, the GameBoy, and to the portable DVD players and Ipods, have directed towards a shift of going from social to the private.  In the city scene, ‘the streets’ that should stand for a shared existence, a common mutual understanding, a place that is owned by “no-one and used by everyone” is being changed, and the notion of the open-minded space and the ethos of community is being heavily challenged.[11]

City – A Space of  Chance Encounters

“All those things that make cities so exciting – the unexpected, the conflicts, the excitement of exploring the urban unknown-will be tightly controlled and screened out with big signs that say ‘no deviant behaviour here.’”[12]  The city’s traditional values and characteristics are the natural ‘buzz’ and excitement that surrounds the ‘freedom of the city’. We encounter freedom by being involved with experiencing chance encounters. This may be the reason why unexpected conversations in a flee market or bus queues are often more refreshing and entertaining.

In the contemporary state of the city, the issues concerning the issues state above are being ignored and the emphasis is placed more into maximizing profit for commercial sectors such as developers and retailers.

Results of the Capitalistic City

In order to achieve the most efficient and attractive way of gaining capital benefits, businesses are isolated into business parks; shops are grouped into shopping centres with theatre-set ‘streets’ built into them; and naturally homes are grouped into residential suburbs and housing estates where property prices are at manageable prices.

Habitation within the city is becoming only a prestige for the extreme upper classes and professionals working within the square mile. The natural grouping of businesses and shopping districts have slowly pushed out the residential areas and has lost the sense of the juxtapotized, inclusive city.  Inevitably, the streets and squares of the public domain, lack the diversity, vitality and humanity of everyday city life. What’s worse is that the existing streets of the city are drained of commercial life and become little more than a no-man’s land for pedestrians and sealed private cars.

People today do value convenience (often provided by single-minded space) but also feeling that they have grown numb to the warmth received from communities, and thus longing for genuine public life.  Richard Rogers provided that “ open-minded places give us something in common: they bring diverse sections of society together and breed a sense of tolerance, awareness, identity and mutual respect.”[13]

Within the city, the consequence of losing the open minded space is not just a problem that can be dismissed lightly. It will in turn generate a massive social decline and recession within the city. As public spaces lose it’s vibrancy and air of excitement and relaxation, this will detract people to spend time within these spaces and eventually people will lose the habit of participating in street life. Naturally, as more and more people will enclosed within their private spaces, less people within these public domains, will feel less safe and thus losing the spaces’ natural surveillance. Instead of feeling hospitable and relaxed in these public places, people will vulnerable and insecure with regard to their safety and soon fear will overtake the public scene.

The safer shopping centres and the clustered shops will naturally become a more favourable place for shoppers, students will feel safer in their campuses than the public streets and residents will feel safer enclosed in their own private spaces than the unpredictable, lifeless public streets.  This concept will inevitably stretch further, where people will develop and enhance their own secure, enclosed private spaces, raising fences and gates to distinguish their own spaces.

On a larger scale, people within the city wall, will enclose themselves inside, and the people on the outside will also remain in their retreats. The rich will enclose themselves inside their own spaces and keep their territories to themselves. When the poor minorities enter the realms of the capital enriched district areas, they will naturally feel unwelcome as all the aspects of the upper class regions such as expensive restaurants and label shops would not be suitable for their needs.

People are already forbidden to enter residential apartments, office blocks and member’s only hotels. Due to these, unwelcome, closed, privatized spaces are becoming more territorial and the city becomes a series of secularized zones.

The poor are trapped inside their inner city ghettos, no different to the shanty towns in the developing worlds and the rich creating a society where it reminds us of the famous quote from Animal Farm – ‘every one is equal, but more are equal than others.’ Creating a two tier society within the existing. Where surveillance and security cameras are found everywhere creating a Big Brother effect.( reference)

Richard Rogers states that “the complexity of community has been untangled and public life has been dissected into individual components. Paradoxically, in this age of rising democracy, cities are increasingly polarizing society into segregated communities.”[14] Critics also provide that “all those things that make cities so exciting- the unexpected, the conflicts, the excitement of exploring the urban unknown-will be tightly controlled and screened out with big signs that say ‘no deviant behaviour here.’’[15]

But as their numbers are expected to stagnate in the next quarter century, how then is the world community expected to accommodate an influx of population as capitalistic cities slow down in growth and development? 

4. Urbanization, Decentralization and Urban Sprawl

Population is growing in some capitalistic cities such as London, Shanghai and Chicago.  However, in other capitalistic cities, such as New York, the population is falling or stagnating.  However, there is an influx of highly-educated 20-35-year-olds, along with an outflow of the very young and the very old.   Apartments that used to hold families are now occupied by one single investment banker, whose spatial requirement for offices, restaurants, and shops can be two to four times more than that required by the family he or she replaces.[16]

            This has forced urban planners to adjust architecture in capitalistic cities to respond to such spatial issues.  Urban glamour zones are expanding in all capitalistic cities, oftentimes in dramatic levels.  For instance, Shanghai has built 5,000 high-rises in just the past seven years, while New York has transformed Times Square from derelict to prime property boom areas.  In Hong Kong, the property demand has sharply risen, and this has eaten up more of its famous harbour.  In capitalistic cities, fewer people often meant more intense economic activity.  Elites who populated in these glamour zones needed more specialized services than ever.[17] In London, during the boom of the 1980s, the Docklands on the Isle of Dogs were targeted to be the financial centre of multi national firms and international conglomerates. The government gave way for the commercial developments by lowering taxation on these lands and incentives were placed do encourage development. The development was encouraged to respond solely to market demand and push up the British economy.[18]

As a result, there was rapid growth in the construction of high-rise unsustainable office blocks. The supply of these over-abundant office spaces and clusters of housings with no proper social infrastructure were higher than their demands. In the 1990’s “the City footed the bill for one of the most spectacular bankruptcies”[19]  Ironically, if there had been more structure social amenities and infrastructure, supported by the balance of shops, houses and schools, the crash would have made the Docklands less vulnerable. The government’s capitalistic approach on this subject of creating an urbanised area of the city did not foresee the civic deterioration, and social mess that their approach would bring them.  In general, like all the industrialised cities all over the world, London’s industries have also left the urban scene. Its docks have become derelict and in need of serious re-development and until winning the Olympic bid, problems in the east of London  have simply been ignored in so many ways.[20]

            The common problem that capitalistic cities encounter is that they tend to “sprawl.”  Urban planners having been using this phrase for more than 60 years to denote the growth that many people associate with suburban development in metropolitan areas.  In a broad sense, urban sprawl is another term for excessive metropolitan decentralization or suburbanization.  This phenomenon results from thousands of individual choices.[21]

Picture Los Angeles in the US, wherein a preference of the middle and working classes for privacy and spaces (choices ridiculed as boringly bourgeois by urban theorists), and of owning their own home, has lead to the mushrooming of many suburbs around the Los Angeles area. In fact, surveys show that in the US, 70 to 80 percent of Americans prefer a single-family home and only 15 percent prefer living in an apartment in a dense urban area.  This “sprawl” phenomenon has been occurring in Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia as well, as growth spills out of urban centre, even in cities with extensive mass transport systems.  In London, the city has been losing population since at least the 1960s.  As H.G. Wells predicted a century ago, much of southern and central England is merely a vast suburb of the capital.[22]

            Advocates of urbanism fight to stop urban sprawl with attempts to force people back into dense concentrations.  Many nations respond by building anonymous tracts 30 to 50 kilometres from the closest jobs or town centre, creating mere dormitory communities for a capitalistic city.  Employment and businesses necessarily remain centralized in such capitalistic or mega cities.   An example of enforced centralization is Seoul, where the average density of more than 14,000 people per square kilometre is three times that of London’s, five times LA’s, and 10 times that of growing US cities like Houston or Phoenix.   It would seem then that a capitalistic city such as Seoul is almost hostile to human life, as the number of traditional Korean houses shrinks while the number of high-rises continues to increase.  This leads to high housing prices and cramped spaces which have helped send Korea’s birth-rate into free-fall, down 30 percent since 1993. This has lead to the “empty cradle” principle which provides that once everyone is forced into a small city space, there is literally no room left for children.  This is the same problem felt in other ultra dense urban societies like Japan and China.[23]

Thus, there is a tipping point for capitalistic cities.  The forces of price and congestion begin pushing people away from the centre.[24] As stated in the previous chapters, it may be advantageous for businesses to remain within the city centres where the infrastructure and communication is at its most efficient state, but people and commuters are pushed away from capitalistic cities due to the high costs of living, dormitory communities mushroomed as alternatives.

Dormitory communities or dormitory towns, known as such in the UK, called bedroom communities in the US, are communities primarily residential in character, with most of its workers commuting to a nearby town or city to earn their livelihood.  They are distinguished from suburbs since the latter generally refer to areas adjacent to main employment centres, whereas dormitory communities have no large businesses and most residents commute to employment centres some distance away.  Commuter towns may be in rural or semi-rural areas, but urban sprawl and conurbation have erased clear demarcations among towns and cities in large metropolitan areas.[25]

There are a number of factors that give rise to dormitory towns.  A town may lose its main source of income, thereby leading its residents to seek work elsewhere.  In other cases, a pleasant small town over time attracts more residents than large businesses.  In the US, the creation of the Interstate Highway System has lead to the absorption of many small cities into the suburbs of larger cities.  However, the most common factor behind dormitory communities is when the workers in the region cannot afford to live in the particular town in which they are employed (usually a capitalistic city) and are forced to seek residency in another town with a lower cost of living.[26]

Thus, urban sprawl has been one of the most obvious results of the fact that capitalistic cities are becoming too expensive to reside in.  High prices in capitalistic cities and traditional suburbs drive people to distant exurbs with extreme commutes into capitalistic cities.  For instance, in the US, average commuting times doubled to about 90 minutes over the last 15 years, making once rural places such as Pike County, Pennsylvania, into bedroom communities for workers employed in New York.  In the UK, this phenomenon is happening in Brighton.  The city started once as a seedy beach resort, an hour away by train from London.  It is now called “London by the Sea” with house prices booming, a thriving arts and media community, and is presently on its way to getting the requisite Frank Gehry landmark building (a futuristic residential tower and sports complex) to mark its progress.[27]

In contrast to urbanism, the new suburbanism seeks to address market forces.  In the US one solution is the development of planned communities, modelled on garden cities such as Valencia in California, or Woodlands in Houston.  These are not mere bedroom communities with malls, but contain well-developed business parks, town centres, and in some cases, well-preserved, natural open spaces.  Followers of suburbanism have also sought to revive abandoned core districts as centres for entertainment, dining, and community events.[28]

There is also the US concept of a boomburb.  A boomburb, a term commonly used in the US and a relatively recent phenomenon, is a large, rapidly growing city that remains essentially suburban in character even if it reaches populations greater than what is typical of urban core cities.   Boomburbs are defined as places with more than 100,000 residents that are not the largest city in their metropolitan areas and maintained double-digit rates of population growth in recent decades.   To date, the US has 53 boomburbs, accounting for 51 of 1990s growth in cities between 100,000 and 400,000 residents.[29]

5. Urban Sprawl: Pros and Cons

The existence of dormitory communities, as a result of centralization of employment and business opportunities in capitalistic cities, is that small town housing markets tend to be weaker than in capitalistic city housing markets.  The development of a dormitory community tends to raise local housing prices and attract upscale service businesses in a process called gentrification.  Oftentimes, long-time resident find themselves displaced by new commuter residents due to the rising house prices, which can also be influenced by zoning restrictions in urbanized areas that prevent construction of suitable housing closer to places of employment.  Dormitory communities also tend to spurt the development of roads and public transportation systems, which generally take the form of light rail lines extended from the city centre to the dormitory community, and new or expanded highways.  Such construction and traffic can lead to urban sprawl which in turn can cause substantial friction.[30]

One of the most important force motivating critics to urban sprawl is class-based aesthetic biases.  It seems that as society becomes richer, and the resources devoted to necessities such as food and shelter diminish, aesthetic issues loom larger.  People have complained about the visual impact of urban sprawl.  An obvious class bias accompanies such objections.  Indictments against urban sprawl never target architecture or landscapes acceptable to upper-middle class taste, no matter how scattered or consuming of lands.  After all, urban sprawls oftentimes refer to subdivisions and shopping centres for middle-and-lower-middle class families.  These class-related tastes and assumption, although rarely discussed, are almost always present.  For instance, in the 19^th century, London exploded outward as developers threw up mile upon mile of brick terrace houses, resulting in a cityscape which horrified highbrow British critics at that time, who considered these new districts to be vulgar, cheap and monotonous.  But houses continued to be built, simply because so many middle-class inhabitants of central London saw these communities as a vast step upward for their families.  In the last generation or two, elite opinion regarding these types of housing structures came around, and to date these row houses in London are widely considered to be the very model of compact urban life.[31]

            During the 1920s, the built-up area of greater London underwent a doubling, creating an outward sprawl at least as great as anything seen in recent America.  Much of the growth consisted of rows and rows of semi-detached houses – sturdy homes similar to the houses of the 19^th century and much deprecated by most of the British cultural elite.  These row houses however were highly appreciated by ordinary Londoners, and ironically, today these neighbourhoods are considered the anti-thesis of sprawl, with the houses restored by members of the aesthetic elite of the current generation.[32]

            The negative outcomes attributed to urban sprawl can be thought of as the summation of the many public costs that individuals and businesses have chosen to ignore when deciding to locate at the urban fringe.  Low-density suburbs scatter and disperse development in inefficient ways, distancing people’s homes from their workplaces while frequently failing to optimally use the open spaces between their dormitory communities and the capitalistic cities where they work.[33]

            Cities such as Los Angeles which resulted in urban sprawls have been beneficial for much of the population.  These capitalistic cities have generated enormous numbers of jobs and vast wealth for a tremendous number of people.  However, urban sprawls have encountered many objections, particularly from those who are more affluent and wealthy.  Ironically, very few people believe that they themselves live in sprawl, or contribute to it.  Sprawls are associated to people with less good taste, and its opponents demand the aesthetic experience of “traditional” settlements without all the inconveniences associated with that kind of landscape.[34]

            At the turn of the century, mostly wealthy families or the elite had multiple options as to their living, working, and recreational settings, often owning many homes in different locations.  Today, even the most humble middle-class family enjoys many, if not all, of these options.  Privacy, mobility, and freedom (as advocated by Wright, earlier discussed), are no longer available only to the wealthiest and most powerful members of society.  A growing number of people have discovered that the surest way to obtain the rich, satisfying life that all citizens crave is through urban sprawls.[35]

            Unfortunately, aesthetic biases and failures of analysis and fair description of suburbs and dormitory communities have created a prejudicial hierarchy that looks down at these outlying areas as a lower form of urbanity.  In reality, rather than declining, many suburbs are actually becoming increasingly gentrified.  It is ironic as well that urbanists who criticize the ills of a modern city end up advocating dispersal of tightly packed populations.  But then they themselves end up criticizing the outlying communities were the people chose to settle.  Many people also have the misconception that the entire countryside is fast being paved over.  This is not true as the land set aside permanently for parks and wildlife areas has grown much faster than urban land in many countries including the UK and US.[36]

In Britain, where roughly half of the population lives in suburbs, the bias of most urban planners and politicians still lies with the city.  However, there is a growing movement to bring arts, from galleries to symphonies, to smaller villages.  The increasingly high cost of city living may help pro-suburban forces in Britain where the government is attempting to fight sprawls by limiting mega malls and other measures.[37]  This phenomenon has lead to the rise of second cities, as more and more nations recognize the need to decentralize their dense, urban areas to promote development for people in the outlying communities.

6. Looking for a Solution to Urban Sprawl

History of Cities and Its Struggles

Cities can be perceived as a problematic residue of nineteenth and early twentieth- century ways of organizing industrial economies to a much more positive role.  The demands, the industries, the kinds of jobs were very different from today.  This is why the cities exist the way they look right now.  Even until 30 years ago, issues related to communities and integration were not even thought of as an issue.  But now, the demands have changed, the people within these cities have changed, and more importantly, habitant’s expectations have also changed and will continue to do so.

Historically, British analysis of social class, social mobility and related issues has been notably spatial, or even anti-spatial. It denied that there was any major basis for spatial variation in class formation. This has contributed to a rather low salience of class analysis in urban sociology.[38]

Strengths of the new urban sociology has been that it at least tried to understand the inter-relationships between economic and social processes. However, capitalistic economic relations in the end provided the central driving force of change for much of this work.

Urban sociology has struggled to tackle the issues related to shaping the city in terms of effective social and political action ever since the 1970’s especially, for example, with the work on urban social movements.[39] The new conventional wisdom, with its focus on both competitiveness and cohesion, appears to be a potential solution, but we are still left with a problem: to what extent can we distinguish between social and economic? ‘Social’ is defined in a rather one-sided way.  Although social structures do accept economical factors that are embedded within the system, it is still an economically driven theory. Economic performance has undoubtedly has both direct and indirect antagonistic links with social structure of cities. That is why competitiveness has no choice but to be linked side by side to promotion of cohesion and community.

Although, the contribution in changing the urban community may not profit the businesses organizations and the commercial sector directly, but in the long term, it will benefit them in terms of the well- being of their employees and staff and the quality of life that all their elite professionals are seeking and most of all the improved social and enhanced community qualities for the whole city.

In terms of improving the issues concerning integration and promotion of integrated public life, legislation are also constantly changing within the city. The local shops and smaller shops on the local high street have been pressured to close down, due to the over powering giant super markets. Multi national companies and large franchise companies taking the place of local cafés and antique shops have been recently in the lime light. People are waking up to the fact that this is a problem that will eventually push out the sense of community, and urban planners are working with the government trying to make way and give the local shops an advantage over these giant stores.

Recognition and addressing these issues as a problem, is the first step in the right direction, but how these issues will be tackled is a different matter altogether.

7. Emergence of Second Cities

            Second cities, which are composed of exurbs, regional hubs, resort towns, and provincial capitals, are on the rise.  From 2000 to 2015, it is expected that the world’s smallest cities (with under 500,000 people) will grow by 23 percent, while the next smallest (1 million to 5 million people) will grow by 27 percent.  The rise of Second Cities have been attributed to a variety of factors, such as: results of seismic shift, the global real-estate bubble, increasing international migration, cheaper transport, new technologies, and the fact that the baby-boom generation is reaching retirement age.[40]

But where do these second cities emerge from?  Studies show that these second cities, or boomtowns emerged naturally, and even unexpectedly, from earlier successes of capitalistic cities.  The 21^st century is an urban civilization, with more people expected to live in cities than in the countryside within a year or so – unprecedented in the history of mankind.  Half of the city dwellers in the world live in metropolises with less than half-a-million residents.  Capitalistic/mega cities are downsizing in terms of population.[41]

According to the latest United Nations (UN) forecasts for all cities with populations greater than 750,000, the top-10 list of the fastest-growing cities in each of the world’s 10 most important economies includes only two major capitals – Moscow and London, which continue to outpace smaller rivals due to unique national reasons.  All the rest of these fastest-growing cities are aspiring middleweight such as Toulouse, Munich, and Las Vegas, or former unknowns such as Florianopolis (Brazil), Ghaziabad (India), Goyan (South Korea) and Fukuoka (Japan).  These virtually unknown cities are not expected to remain in the shadows for long.  Also dubbed as “boomtowns,” these second cities are ambitious and are challenging capitalistic cities.  For instance, Toulouse is competing with Paris to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, while Fukuoka is challenging Tokyo for the same honour.[42]

In the 1990s, megalopolises boomed as the global markets skyrocketed to unprecedented levels.  This was particularly the case in metropolitan areas with high-tech or knowledge-based industries like finance (such as New York and London), and the explosion of growth in eastern cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong.  Real-estate prices in these capitalistic cities went up, and the result is the creation of what demographer William Frey (from the Brookings Institution in Washington, US) calls “gated regions.”  These are capitalistic cities such as New York, London and Tokyo where both the city and its numerous surrounding suburbs have become too expensive a place to live in, making these cities unaffordable to everyone except for the very wealthy.[43]

The metropolis of the future is less intensely urban as most people would have expected.  Growth is not confined to developing trendy downtown areas or skyscrapers.  Real growth in jobs and population is expected to happen on the periphery of capitalistic cities – second cities, exburbs, and outlying communities.  New urbanism, which focuses on downtown revival, must give way to the “new suburbanism”, which is a concept not only confined to the land of free-ranging suburbs, the US, but to countries all over Europe and Asia as well.   Instead of fighting the “sprawl,” new suburbanism advocated focus on ways to make second cities and outlying communities a better place to live in.  The concept seeks to revitalize dormitory communities by bringing business and jobs, developing main streets, and to recover ideals of early advocates of decentralization, such as the early 20^th century British visionary Ebenezer Howard who proposed dispersing populations into largely self-sustaining “garden cities.”[44]

            This shift of focus toward suburbanism places an emphasis on the development of second cities and in making outlying communities, and centres sustainable.  As city centres are decentralized, this shift towards the development of second cities also tackles issues regarding social integration, community awareness and need to revitalize the community.

How should the problems of social integration, lack of community awareness, and revitalizing the need of a community be addressed?

The need of an ‘open- minded’ community has without a doubt become a necessity, no longer a luxury. Slowly these issues are gaining recognition, and in parallel to recognizing the issues, different methods are needed to solve this enormous urban problem.

The methods of approaching this problem should be divided into two categories: at the national level and at the personal level.

1. National Level

Sprawl – Historical Context of the Decentralization of Cities

As discussed earlier in this thesis, 1900 Britain was essentially an urban society. Eleven years later official figures would indicate that 32 of its 40 million inhabitants lived in towns. Such extensive urbanisation, then without precedent in either Europe or the US, was dominated by London. The capital contained 20 percent of the population of England and Wales. This urban, economic and cultural concentration, aided by geography and political stability, and reinforced by a national press, was highly significant.[45]

Nineteenth-century British cities, however, were hardly the product of systematic planning.  The sense of harmony which were traditionally to be expected from communities was instead replaced by the physical chaos and cultural disorder that accompanied a rapidly increasing metropolis filled with a variety of different people.  According to Chambers (1986), ““British writers, with the partial exception of Dickens, found the city streets inscrutable: a metaphorical “Africa, occasionally explored, usually ignored.”[46]  This chaos and order can be attributed to the introduction of technology, mechanized transportation, and factory machinery.  These factors results in a chaotic urban scene which was marked by day time commerce and administration, tending to overlook the personalities and traits which defined the upper and middle classes of that era.[47]  In addition, London’s extensive railway and newly made underground network allowed these citizens of the business world and the professional classes to live in “‘a gesture of non-commitment to the city in everything but function.”[48]

Advancements in England’s transport system, which throughout history involved trains, trolleys, motorized public transport, and motor cars, created a momentum among the residents in the capitalistic city which made for their dispersal towards suburban areas.  In other words, people took advantage of cheap transportation and advancement in communications to live out in suburbs and outlying areas.  Such technological advancement also allowed them to maintain modern and comfortable lifestyles even though they weren’t situated in the hub of the capitalistic city.[49]

Thus, among the upper class and many of the middle classes in London, their own city had become a foreign territory.  And like history repeating itself, although not for the same reasons, the theory of professionals working within the city, and commuting back and forth to their homes in the suburbs is identical.

As a result of this move outside the city, commerce and employment slowly followed as well.  Yet how can a city aiming for second city status, or at the very least, growth and development, ensure success in this endeavour?  The answer is whether these cities have the means and resources to exploit the forces pushing people and businesses out of the capitalistic cities.  On the national level, there are three factors to consider in order to develop a second city: transportation links, decentralization of work, and democratization of the good life.

Transportation Links 

One important ingredient is having effective transport links, particularly to the biggest commercial hubs.  Some second cities which have been successful in this is Goyan, which is South Korea’s fastest-growing city, in part due to the fact that it is 30 minutes by subway from Seoul.  Fast-growing IT hubs outside Delhi, like Gurgaon and Noida, sit on well-paved roads into the capital, with Ghaziabad serving as a new bedroom community for workers.  Cheap airlines in Europe have also breathed new life to a substantial number of provincial capitals, from Glasgow to Bologna.  Studies show that a new Ryanair or easyJet link to a given city can immediately raise property prices in that area by an estimated 30 percent or more.[50]

Decentralization of Work

Another key element in the success of second cities is the decentralization of work, which is in turn driven largely by new technologies.  As more and more financial deals are transacted in capitalistic cities such as New York and London, plenty of jobs in booming service industries like banking, entertainment, and high tech are flowing to second cities which are being dubbed as “rising urban stars.”  Second cities such as Dubai, Las Vegas, Tallinn, Dalian, and Cape Town have not only improved their Internet groundwork, but often have tech parks and universities that produce the kinds of talent that populates growth industries.[51]

An interesting example for this is the city of Montpellier in France, which has been regarded as a good case study in urban decentralization. Montpellier used to be a big Mediterranean village, with one good, reputable university, numerous pretty villas, and an IBM manufacturing base.  Once high-speed trains were built in France, Parisians began to visit Montpellier for weekend breaks, with these Parisians eventually buying homes in this city.  This started a critical mass of middle-class professional who began taking advantage of flexible working arrangements to take three days in Paris, and two down South in Montpellier.  Eventually, big companies started to trickle into the area, including medical-technology and electronics firms, and IBM laid down more investment into service businesses in Montpellier.  They began building amenities to better serve incoming professionals, such as an opera, and a tram line to discourage cars in the city centre.  Montpellier has blossomed into a new, cosmopolitan society.[52]

Democratization of the Good Life

People hesitate to leave capitalistic cities because they are afraid to miss out on the culture and chaos in big cities.  They worry about missing out on the fast-paced lifestyle, the theatres, the shopping centres, and the wide variety of activities and job opportunities available in capitalistic cities that may not be initially available in second cities which are perceived as slower-paced, easygoing and even boring.  However, urban decentralization has brought the good life into small towns, allowing people to avoid having to make the choice between culture and chaos in capitalistic cities and the slower-paced second cities.[53]

Immigration has also been vital in the growth of second cities.  In the UK, hundreds of thousands of Eastern European immigrants have helped to boost the capital.  In smaller northern and coastal cities in the UK, where workers in agriculture, construction and lower-level service jobs, are in much demand.  Although these immigrants are ultimately expected to take their earnings home, where they are likely to buy property is not in capitalistic cities, but in outlying communities or second cities which tend to be less expensive than mega communities.[54]

In the UK, a prime example of a second city would be Manchester.    A nationwide Mori poll found that 34 percent of people placed Manchester ahead of its traditional rival, Birmingham, which has a much larger population.  The poll was commissioned by Marketing Manchester, the organization which promotes the city and Greater Manchester.  It asked more than 1,000 people to nominate what they considered as England’s first, second and third cities. Pursuant to the poll, Birmingham was named second city by 29 percent of the respondents.  Liverpool came fourth with 10 percent, while Leeds, Newcastle, York and Bristol were also named.[55]

Manchester’s status as a second city in England is attributed to the development of a more international image for the city in recent years. The city regenerated itself in recent years, overturning its previous negative image as an ugly, industrial centre.  The change has been due to its booming city centre, major airport, and improved communications and transport infrastructure.   An ever increasing number of visitors drop by Manchester every year, in part because of its superb hotels, leisure and entertainment facilities, and a cultural offering which includes major museums and galleries.  Residents of Manchester themselves boast of the city’s reputation for shopping, music and nightlife.[56]

1. Personal Level

On the personal level, the emergence of second cities have much to do with the participation of the individual citizen.

By increasing reliance on private security and private transport, single-minded spaces are being built at a quickening pace.  A good place to start is to mobilize the participation of individuals and their sense of belonging to the city.  I cannot emphasise enough that it is the individual’s commitment to their city which is central to achieving sustainability.

Rogers states that “civic beauty is the result of the social and cultural commitment of the communities of an urban society…I passionately believe in the importance of citizenship and the liveliness and humanity it stimulates. It manifests itself in planned large-scale civic gestures but also in the small scale and the spontaneous.”[57] Rogers further provides that community is the formation of small individual inputs and participation as well as the large scaled projects and urban planning.[58]

Individuals have the power to change the masses and can eventually reform the government, the law, and create a whole revolution. According to Cook (1999), “More and more people want to determine their own parameters of behaviour. They want to decide how they shall behave, weather it’s playing, working, loving etc. People are less and less prepared to accept imposed rules and patterns of behaviour. Doing your own thing is important.”[59]

Active citizenship and vibrant urban life are essential components of a good city and of civic identity. In order to reform the urban scene, citizens and individuals must be involved. In order to make them participate, what better solution is there than to make them feel ownership of the public spaces. The citizens must be made to feel responsible for their surrounding environment. Only then, these public domains will gain respect and earning the respect of the inhabitants will be the major factor in reformation of the urban culture, sense of integration, and social well-being. It is when the individual citizens become the driving force of reacting to their civic rights, this will be the glue to binding an urban society.

What is important is to offer the citizens and individuals a sense of community within the second city.

Art, sports, and other cultural activities within a community have shown to have positive impact on health, crime, unemployment particularly in deprived areas.  Arts, sports, cultural and recreational activities can contribute greatly in renewing a community, and in developing people’s skills and self-confidence, which in turn ultimately builds community identity.[60]  The reason is that there is a stronger link between the individuals and their community, which in turn boost economic growth.  As such, urban planning should place importance on the development of culture centres and community centres within second cities.  Building and centres which allow for the enhancement of sports, arts, culture and recreation within the city allows for a stronger connection between the people and their community.

8. Existing and Future Second Cities

Second cities are expected to stay small.  Economists provide that once a city reaches a certain size, its productivity starts to fall.  At the maximum level of 6 million people in one given city, real estate costs and travel times are expected to increase, and occasional chaos creates a situation wherein the city centre may be a good place to live in, but only if you are wealthy, whereas the less wealthy have to settle for outlying areas where it becomes harder to live and work in.  Studies show that 60 Central and Eastern European cities with 500,000 or more people will be among the primary spots for corporate relocation in the next few years.[61]

            Some countries around the world have been actively promoting this concept of second cities. What second cities should avoid is developing into an inefficient sprawl with no centre, such as New Jersey in the US.  In China, a Go West campaign has encouraged investment into the nation’s smaller inland cities. On the other hand, Italy is trying to create a tourist hub of towns located close to each other, but each offering different yet complementary cultural activities.  It should be noted that rather than investing on fancy buildings to re-create or copy structures in capital cities, second cities would benefit more in pouring that capital into enhancing its own unique local flavour.  Rather merely imitating or aping the capitalistic cities, second cities should work on emphasizing their own local colours which is what drew people into their community in the first place.[62]

However, it should be pointed out that the huge economic advantages must still be recognized as guiding the process of decentralization, which is why second cities emerge near big cities or in the corridors between them, not in the middle of nowhere.[63]

            Evolving into a second city, and eventually to a capitalistic city, is not an easy step.  Certain strategies and solutions concerning spatial planning, waste management, collective infrastructure, and transport, which are appropriate for capitalistic cities cannot just be scaled down, imperfect as they are, for implementation in a less capitalistic city.  There is also a need to understand the place of capitalistic or mega cities within a world social, political, and economic system in which, it seems, nations are finding it harder and harder to fit.[64]

            The development of second cities should also involve emphasis on architecture and sage urban planning.  Many mid-sized cities have absolutely dead downtown areas which need reinvigoration.  This may be achieved by re-using older building as one of the economic strategies for developing an area.  The economic diversity of smaller cities also needs to be addressed.  Most small cities have only a few large corporations and are de facto company towns.  Having economic variety, such as a mix of medical device industries, heavy industrial, food, and retail, all located within walking distance from downtown makes prospective second cities more economically diverse.[65]

The important thing to hold on to is what Kotkin (2004) refers to as a “sweet spot”, wherein a town is still business-friendly and affordable but yet has enough of the attributes of a cosmopolitan capitalistic city to be interesting. Economic and culture diversity are thus essential for second cities. One such second city is Minneapolis in the US.

In other words, planning the development of second cities should involve maintaining the appeal of such a city in the first place, rather than imitating the architecture and structures of urban capitalistic cities.  The US architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, had the vision of integrating the city into the countryside, envisioning a decentralized city that stressed agrarian living and familial connectivity.  Wright had strong democratic ideals, and this grew into the vision of Broadacre City in the US.  His vision of the city was placed in the countryside (or outlying areas) where people could live free from centralization.  Wright envisioned nature and city coalescing into one entity within which structural forms could be built to merge into and become one with the natural landscape.  He points out that the problems inherent in the centralization of the cit that capitalistic cities have created a social structure based on the notion of rent, where property are given monetary values that serve to benefit the select.  From this value, a society based on a system of production that controls consumption arises, which, in turn, creates a society that is functionally inorganic.[66]

            Another problem Wright has with modern, capitalistic city is the overabundance of skyscrapers in an overcrowded area.  These skyscrapers not only bring about the exploitation of citizens (especially by those who control the production and the rent within the city), but they also bring about a concentration of traffic within the society.  According to Wright[67] (1958), as a higher concentration of citizens inhabit the city, the traffic problem causes to city to become overwhelmed by pollution (pp. 30-60).

            Thus, Wright designed Broadacre City, his response to the capitalistic city.  Broadacre was produced by a vision which sought for a decentralized, agrarian, democratic place.   Wright’s development of a city model was “designed to give space, air, and beauty to every individual in the community” so as to bring about the “possibility of greater individual development for everyone in our democratic society.”[68]

            Wright’s use of organic architecture meshed the city into the countryside in such a way as to preserve nature, individualism, and democracy.  Broadacre city “allowed for the re-emergence of the citizen and his transformation from citizen to the denizen of the landscape.”[69]

Rogers provides that “historically, London, unlike the walled cities of its European counterparts, developed around a multitude of centres, and it is still a collection of distinct towns and villages – Hampstead to Westminster, Notting Hill to Limehouse – each with its own local character, visual identity and history.  Instead of allowing London to sprawl, and this polycentric pattern to erode, we should actively reinforce these neighbourhoods as compact, sustainable nuclei.”[70]  In other words, Rogers provided that instead of continuing with incessant urban sprawl which has so far been detrimental to the development of London, England should focus on consolidating its individual cities and boroughs.  The solution then is decentralize activity and development from London and to start developing second cities by focusing on the other cities, towns, and boroughs around England.  The concept of second cities actually provides for a blank canvas to urban planners, architects, and designers.  The use of flexible masterplans to which would be appropriate for the city or town sought to be develop would be more effective rather than using generic guidelines or constructive prescriptions of an aesthetic formula.[71]

Urban planners and analyst bemoan the fact that most people long to live in real communities but often times do not have an idea what that means in terms of physical design.[72]    According to Saunders (1987), people have become ignorant of the design possibilities for their urban environment. They are always aware that their given environment needs to change in terms of its quality of living, but they do not know how to create that in the foreseeable future.[73]

“Racism, ethnic chauvnism, and class devaluation…grow partly from the desire for community” such that “the positive identification of some groups is often achieved by first defining other groups as the other, the devalued semihuman.”[74] As a consequence, the community has often been a barrier to rather than facilitator of progressive social change.

In the suburbs and the second cities, the existing habitants who long for social change and progression are enclosing themselves, in their own small communities and thus, the new migrants are not accepted by the community. The professionals who originally moved into these suburbs to find a sense of integration and participation are pushed out by the people who crave their own community, a community that withstands change and protests against reforming their social identity.

9. Conclusion

            The concept of a capitalistic city is unavoidable, given advancement in technology, and participation in an increasingly global economy.  Capitalistic cities serve as global cities that help accommodate financial and business transactions with the international community.  This opens up the doors to more jobs, and people from outlying areas tend to flock to capitalistic cities because of these employment opportunities.  A growing population in capitalistic cities has ushered in the concept of urban sprawl, as a highly urbanized society expands outwards to accommodate the people.  These people end up living in suburbs or dormitory communities, wherein they have to commute elsewhere to get to their jobs.  These types of communities have little impact on decentralizing capitalistic cities and other urban areas since these dormitory chance offer very little in terms of business, economic, and even recreational activities.

            In the case of London, one strategy would be to ensure that day-to-day administration of the city remains with the individual boroughs and under close scrutiny of the local citizens directly affected.  Decision on strategic planning issues such as transport, housing, public realm, culture, education, waste and recycling, pollution and taxation are naturally left to the elected body, but input from the local people is vital to restore that sense of community within various parts of the city.  One avenue for achieving such participation from the local people is through the creation of architecture centres in the community.  This will allow collaboration and participation of citizens, architects, urban planners and developers, in designing a city which will not only take into consideration environmental concerns, but the needs of future generations as well.  These architecture centres will convey the message to the people that their suggestions and input as to the development of their community are integral to effective urban planning.[75]  The result of such collaboration would be informed buildings and design that will best fit the needs and personality of each community.

            The use of ‘open-minded spaces’ in second cities rather than ‘close-minded spaces’ allow for more freedom and less controlled spaces within a particular community or environment.  It helps strengthen the sense of community among the inhabitants in the second city, which in turn helps to encourage participation among individuals.  The existence of culture centre, community centres, and architecture centres, wherein citizens and local government officials, as well as urban planners and designers, can come together and collaborate, helps to provide a strong link and feeling of interconnectedness between the people and their community.  This makes second cities a more socially pleasant place to live.  Applied architecture, and designs based on a more spontaneous, and flexible masterplan, rather than a generic design, helps to foster arts, culture, sports and recreation within the second city.  These elements not only connect the people to each other and their community, but also helps to establish the identity of the particular second city.

            Urban sprawl thus helped pave the way for second cities, which are previous midsize cities developing at an outstanding rate in recent years.  Second cities provide options to urban dwellers, but often times involve lower costs of living.  More and more businesses are entering second cities, and these cities have been re-generating their community, even going as far as imitating the look and feel of capitalistic cities in terms of structure and architecture.  This, however, should be approached with caution.  The strategies and systems appropriate to a capitalistic city may not always work out for a second city, especially with regard to spatial and transport infrastructure.  What second cities should always strive to maintain is the very character that drew people to move there in the first place.  In other words, maintaining a second city’s “sweet spot,” a healthy balance of business advancement along with cultural integrity, should be maintained.  A second city should stick to its own personality and charm instead of merely imitating capitalistic cities in their look and general feel.  It should always strive to remind its inhabitants why they opted to move out of the tight, congested, fast-paced capitalistic cities in the first place.

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Abhat, Divya, Shauna Dineen, Tamsyn Jones, Jim Motavalli, Rebecca Sanborn, and Kate Slomkowski.  (2004).  “Cities of the Future.” Earth Days. Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://www.earthdaysac.org/megacities.htm

Alofsin, Anthony. “Broadacre City: The Reception of a Modernist Vision, 1932-1988.” Centre: A Journal of Architecture in America. 5 (1989): 14.

“Boomburb.” (2006c).  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomburbs

Bruegmann, Robert.  (June 2006).  “How Sprawl Got a Bad Name.” Attack of the Snobs.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 from The American Enterprise Online at: http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.19175/article_detail.asp

Buck, Nick, Ian Gordon, Alan Harding and Ivan Turok, Eds.  Changing Cities. Rethinking Urban Competitiveness, Cohesion and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

“Capitalism.” (2006a).  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

Castells, Manuel.  The City and the Grassroots.  University of California Press, 1983.

Chambers, Ian.  Popular Culture, The Metropolitan Experience.  Routledge Publishing, 1986.

Clapson, Mark.  Suburban Century: Social Change and Urban Growth in England and the United States.  New York: Berg, 2003.

“Commuter town.”  (2006b). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commuter_town

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[1] Sassen, Saskia. (July 3-10, 2006). “How Population Lies.” Newsweek International.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13529488/site/newsweek/

[2] Florida, Richard.  (July 3-10, 2006).  “The New Megalopolis.” Newsweek International.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13528839/site/newsweek/

[3] Dogan, Mattei.  (September 2004).  “Mega-cities.” UNESCO.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at http://portal.unesco.org/shs/es/ev.php-URL_ID=7886&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

[4] “Fury over ‘obscene’ city bonuses.” (September 9, 2006).  The Evening Standard.  This is London Online. Retrieved 2 December 2006 at: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23366680-details/Fury+over+’obscene’+City+bonuses/article.do

[5] Sassen, 2006.

[6] Abhat, Divya, Shauna Dineen, Tamsyn Jones, Jim Motavalli, Rebecca Sanborn, and Kate Slomkowski.  (2004).  “Cities of the Future.” Earth Days. Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://www.earthdaysac.org/megacities.htm

[7] Ibid.

[8] Rogers, Richard.  Cities for a Small Planet. Basic Books, 1998.

[9] Williamson, Judith, quoted in Urry, John.  Consuming Places.  Routledge, 1995.

[10] Urry, John.  Consuming Places.  Routledge, 1995.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Saunders, William S., Ed. (1987).  “Sprawl and Suburbia.” Harvard Design Magazine Reader 2.  University of Minnesota Press, at 25.

[13] Rogers, 1998.

[14] Rogers, 1998, at 9.

[15] Saunders, at 25.

[16] Sassen, 2006.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Rogers, 1998.

[19] Ibid, at 109.

[20] Rogers, 1998.

[21] Wassmer, Robert W.  (July 2001).  “An Economist’s Perspective on Urban Sprawl, Part 1 – Defining Excessive Urbanization in California and Other Western States.”  California Senate Office of Research.  California State University.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 from:  http://www.sen.ca.gov/sor/reports/COMM_STUDIES/SPRAWLREPORTFINAL.H

[22] Kotkin, Joel. (July 3-10, 2006). “Building up the Burbs.” Newsweek International. Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13529578/site/newsweek.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Florida, 2006.

[25] Wikipedia, 2006b.

[26] “Commuter town.”  (2006b). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commuter_town

[27] Foroohar, 2006.

[28] Kotkin, 2006.

[29] “Boomburb.” (2006c).  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomburbs

[30] Wikipedia, 2006b.

[31] Bruegmann, Robert.  (June 2006).  “How Sprawl Got a Bad Name.” Attack of the Snobs.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 from The American Enterprise Online at: http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.19175/article_detail.asp

[32] Ibid.

[33] Wassmer, 2001.

[34] Bruegmann, 2006.

[35] Ibid.

[36]  Ibid.

[37] Kotkin, 2006.

[38] Buck, Nick, Ian Gordon, Alan Harding and Ivan Turok, Eds.  Changing Cities. Rethinking Urban Competitiveness, Cohesion and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, at 51.

[39] Castells, Manuel.  The City and the Grassroots.  University of California Press, 1983.

[40] Foroohar, 2006.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Kotkin, 2006.

[45] Chambers, Ian.  Popular Culture, The Metropolitan Experience.  Routledge Publishing, 1986.

[46] Ibid, at 20.

[47] Ibid, at 22.

[48] Dyos, H.K.  “Essays in Urban History.”  Exploring the Urban Past.  Cannadine and Reeder, Eds.  Cambridge University Pres, 1982.

[49] Clapson, Mark.  Suburban Century: Social Change and Urban Growth in England and the United States.  New York: Berg, 2003.

[50] Foroohar, 2006.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Kotkin, 2006.

[55] “Manchester ‘England’s second city.’” (2004).  BBC News.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2253035.stm

[56] Ibid.

[57] Rogers, 1998, at 15.

[58] Rogers, 1998.

[59] Cook, Peter, Ed.  Archigram, Princeton Architectural Press, 1^st Ed., 1999, at 119.

[60] Buck, Nick, Ian Gordon, Alan Harding and Ivan Turok, Eds.  Changing Cities. Rethinking Urban Competitiveness, Cohesion and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

[61] Foroohar, 2006.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Florida, 2006.

[64] Dogan, 2004.

[65] Kotkin, Joel.  (September 9, 2003).  “Outlook: The Rise of the Mid-size City.” The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A43730-2003Sep8&notFound=true

[66] “Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and Work.” (2006).  University of Kentucky.  Retrieved 29 November 2006 at: http://www.uky.edu/Classes/PS/776/Projects/Wright/wright.htm

[67] Wright, Frank Lloyd. The Living City. New York: Horizon Press, 1958. 31-190

[68] Zygas, K. Paul, ed. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Phoenix Papers. [Volume 1: Broadacre City], Tempe: Arizona State University Press, 1995. 17-31

[69] Alofsin, Anthony. “Broadacre City: The Reception of a Modernist Vision, 1932-1988.” Center: A Journal of Architecture in America. 5 (1989): 14

[70] Rogers, 1998, at 113.

[71] Rogers, 1998.

[72] Saunders, 1987, at 23.

[73] Ibid.

[74] Young, I.M., quoted in Saunders, 1987, at 23.

[75] Rogers, 1998.