Geography 2556
Final Paper
New York City: The Epic Global City of the World
Ways that NYC is a Global City:
New York, New York is the most populous city in the United States and holds
the number one spot on the Global Cities Index. According to The World’s Cities by
A.J. Jacobs, the term “global city” is “a relatively new phenomenon that has been
generated in the present period by the development of an all-encompassing world
system–variously termed late capitalism, post-industrialism, the informational age,
and so on” (Abu-Lughod 130). New York City has several elements that factor into
not only being a global city, but also the number one global business center.
Elements such as business activity, labor force, access to media and information,
cultural amenities and political influence all go into the basis of determining the
power of a global city. Also, the “expansion of the market via the internationalization
of commerce, a revolution in the technologies of transport and communications…
and the increased importance of business services, particularly evident in the
growth of the so-called FIRE economic sector” (Abu-Lughod 130) are included in the
characteristics of a global city. New York is impressive because it has had “all of these
characteristics before the last quarter of the nineteenth century” (Abu-Lughod 131).
The emerging and maturing global economy is constantly changing but New York
City has always been a prominent global city and still to this day remains at number
one.
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So what other specific reasons is New York a global city? According to NYU
Local, New York is “the global capital of the financial industry…trade[s] billions of
dollars, [and] has members of every nationality on the face of the planet in its
teeming masses of buildings stretched across five boroughs and three islands”
(Lipsitz 1). The global news media is situated in New York and has astounding
culture with art museums; a theater district and numerous television shows are
filmed there. New York is a main gathering place for a plethora of races and “the fuel
of the post-industrial economy is mainly comprised of innovation, creativity and
brain power. One must also have freedom and safety to think and create. New York
City provides such an environment as it continues to serve as a gateway to the rest of
the nation” (Cohen 1). Also, the United Nations is situated in New York City, which is
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