URBANIZATION By Errol Orion Farley

Clough Article

Late 19th and early 20th century business used New York City as a home base for operations due to it’s geographical position between all other states and Europe. Such largely successful men as John Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie all made their riches outside New York but used it to set up shop, partly due to the cities prestigious reputation for success. Now with e-trade rendering geographical location somewhat meaningless New York is loosing it’s stronghold on the American dollar as e-commerce is portable enough to be done anywhere that there is internet connectivity. While New York certainly was the undeniable king of the 20th century the question now moves to which city will be the new economic powerhouse of America when New York leaves its throne. Unless certain companies (yahoo, AOL, Amazon, etc.) come together, as Rockefeller and company did, and decide where the next trade capital of America shall be located then New York might just keep the title or another country might just steal it away from us.

Kotkin articles

In the past 25 years a score of cities over seas that were previously only known for their absolute poverty are building skyscrapers and being put on the map as the #1 way to spend your buck.

Calgary in Canada and Houston and Dallas in Texas have grown 6x faster in the past decade than NY, LA or SF. These cities are turning into centers for world trade, thereby being called ‘world cities’.

Now Asia has more skyscrapers than North America. New York once started as a grimy, peasant infested

city with little prospects just like so many cities around the world. With New Yorks humble beginnings and opulence today it begs the question of exactly what seemingly futureless cities will emerge from the dirt to sweep the world in a storm of economic boom and social betterment.

America Compared: Brown

Gridded Lives – This is about two cities and their similarity to each other, one city is a prison city in Kazakhstan and the other is a railroad city in Texas. Actual names don't really matter, its the idea the book is trying to get across that’s important

Cities designed in grids for efficiency (one for marching prisoners through, but still same result)

Cites were built on barren lots, seemed like nothing could have ever lived there.

Barren lots were not always barren. natives were forced off the land. Indians in Texas and nomads in Kazakhstan.

Texas city is failed, nothing lies there now but an empty lot due to lack of "survivalness" of the place. instead of being built 2 miles north by rivers and fertile ground, rail road tycoon Billings built it right off the railroad. Hyped it up, sold housing lots and.. nothing got built. People bought the lots because it was hyped up but they never planned on living there.

Kazakhstan prison city is now a flourishing city. after the prisoners were released, the city was made into a unrecognizable (as a prison) city with stores and houses and things to do.

Era of speed cities. cities were build at record speeds, there was no time to wait. races to build cities in weeks rather then months commenced (all over).

Indians and nomads were "normalized" and taught how to be civilized. this included learning how to farm and speak the dominant language. (english/russian)

America Compared: Nugent

GREAT TRANSATLANTIC MIGRATIONS Tons of migration from Europe to the Americas Most north Europeans went to north America Most Mediterranean's went to south America. America is much like brazil in this aspect, and Canada is much like Argentina

ARGENTINA Argentina had the largest swell of immigrants proportionately. example,

census showed that 30% of national population was foreign born. Land remained controlled by small groups of rich. Most everyone else rented. the poor had little chance of acquiring

ownership.

BRAZIL Small amounts of immigrants. Remoteness and primitive farming methods lead to poor economy in the

early colonies Census revealed 3.8% foreign born Most immigration was labor seeking, labor was land and agricultural rather

then factories and industry

America Compared: Rybczynski

City land of dollar, we’re dealing with Chicago here. A city that boomed out of nowhere. The city burned down but the residents of Chicago were not ready to give up and

persisted to create a strong industrial center for economic growth. So they rebuilt it from the ground up. They used the burned down city as an excuse to build a better one and build a better one they did.

Tried to be a modern city. set up street lamps right after Thomas Edison invents light bulb. used cable cars after they were used in other cities. Upgraded to electric cars as well. Changed from brick buildings to steel buildings and used elevators to make it actually practical to have a tall building.

Chicago was the tallest city of it's time Invented 'downtown' to be a safe fun experience for the woman. Shopping and

advertising was a key ingredient to luring these typical women into downtown to spend all their husbands hard earned money in just one block.

Spent most money prettying up bottom floors of buildings instead of all of the floors - proof that Chicago was all about glamour and first impressions/luring.

Urbanization is connection of people to people Even before telephones and other fast forms of media, day to day people were eager

to keep up to date on the happenings of the world thru newspaper and travelers tales.

Cites were bound to happen in one way or the other. With an expanding frontier loaded with possibilities, resources and an ever expanding population (including extremely large amounts of migration into America from all over the world).

Industrial expansion of late 19th century is what made Chicago turn from village to metropolis.

Foreign Policy: Farley’s World

While Kotkin and Khanna have almost completely different ideas of where the world is headed and think they are both correct in their individual hypothesis's, I believe that it will actually be a blending of the both.

As a side note I would like to point out that Kotkin stated Tokyo had over 26 million people in 1975 and Khanna stated Tokyo had 20 million in 1980. Correct figures and times? http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/habitat/profiles/tokyo.as Says that Tokyo didn’t have 26.5 mil untill 1995.

As cities continue to grow, Khanna would have us believe that suburban sprawl is undesirable and inefficient but in many cases it is the preferred way of life. The ‘decent god fearing’ family would have a hard time raising like minded children in a city of 100 million with over 600,00 people populating a mere square mile.

Kotkin accepts the prediction that megacities will be the primary powerhouse for economic expansion but will most likely hold only a poor quality of life for its inhabitants. People need their space and in megacities they won’t get that. The prime example of a highly industrialized, technologically innovative, smart and affluent suburban society would be Silicon Valley. With the advent of live video chat, in the palm of your hand or on your desktop, business meetings will be able to take place from the comfort of one’s own home.

In my world of tomorrow I see both of these things POTENTIALLY happening (Assuming that we don’t all die of the nuclear holocaust, ‘Alligator Flu’, a gamma pulse from the alignment of distant planets or from a series of natural disasters all occurring at once). Both these writers seem like they know what they are talking about but I’ll meet them in the middle. For what it’s worth I’d really like to sit them both down for a couple beers and let them have a gentlemen's battle over who’s right and why.

Foreign Policy: Kotkin’s Suburbia

As the world turns and each new morning brings a new day, Kotkin believes that the average person is striving for a house with a white picket fence and a family. While the world population explodes rapidly and the quality of its citizens lives improves they naturally strive for a better way of life. Kotkin believes that there will be an expansive future in the suburban housing track communities because of the commercialization of this life of ours and the ever broadening desire to be so ‘average’.

In the most very basic point of view Kotkins future conflicts with Khanna’s but from the American standpoint it makes so much sense.

Entire Communities housing thousands of people can be constructed in mere weeks.

Foreign Policy: Khanna’s Cities

Currently more than half of the world lives in cities and that number is growing rapidly. Khanna predicts “knowledge cities” being megalopolises that will define this new urban age with ‘jagged skylines that stretch as far as the eye can see’ with the ‘tens of millions’ in population. With megacities like this emerging the innovation of technology and diversity of life will have no chance but to skyrocket parallel to the incline of the population and economic growth if Khanna is correct in his assumption.

In 1980 Tokyo’s population of 20 million was mind blowing but today our minds are being calibrated to accept Shanghai and Mubai’s 100 million of tomorrow. With these kinds of numbers I believe that crime will have no choice but to increase in likelihood and severity, causing a sharp increase in big government controlling more and more of the city-dwellers life, which in turn is a bad thing for the individual but may be a good thing for the whole.