New York

WHAT MAKES NEW YORK A GLOBAL CITY ?

Key questions

How to define the concept of global city by the case of NYC ? An iconic city

What are the activities that make New York a major world impulse center?

How is the city of New York developed, how does it energize an entire region ?

What are the limits, the challenges for New York, a global city?

Final task

To answer the key questions above, you will have to make a video report about NYC as a global city showing its strengths & features and challenges & limits.

Instructions

1. Your page must present examples about each feature of a global city (previous page about Global cities)

2. You have to use a specific geographic vocabulary (global, globalization, on a global scale, on a regional scale, area, CBD, urban network, megalopolis, skyscraper, skyline, headquarters, Transnational Corporation TNC, hub, commuting, congestion, brain drain, highly-skilled workers, migrants, urban planning, gentrification, inner city, outer city, suburbs, transportation network, tourism industry)

3.Choose relevants pictures, max 5/6 and comment on them.

4. Dead line November 2sd / group work of 4 students

Useful resources

Document 1

Time line: the birth of a global city (17th-20th century)

1624 : first Dutch settlement

1674 : New York City returned to the English and remained English. The city’s commercial ties to London gave it an advantage over other American cities

1883 : opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Manhattan and Brooklyn became a single city of 3.4 million people over an area f 359 square miles

1895 : the metropolis had 298 firms with assets of $1 million

1921 : the port was merged with that of the New Jersey to create a single Port Authority1932 : New York’s governor, Franklin D/ Roosevelt was elected president and his administration launched a New Deal ; New York City alone received $1 billion between 1933 and 1939

1934-1945 : mayoralty of Fiorello La Guardia : major bridges, sixty miles intracity expressway, a traffic tunnel for East River, additions to subway lines

1939 : opening of La Guardia airport and 14 new piers added to the port

1930, 1931, 1939 : Chrysler building, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center

1945 : United Nations established in New York City

1947-1963 : massive construction boom, addition of 58 million square feet of office space

1955 : 7.8 million people

1960s : race riots

1970s : the city experienced near bankruptcy

1985 : 6 of the big 8 accounting firms and 7 of the top 10 management consulting agencies were in New York City

1988 : the metropolitan region reached 18 million people ; central city shrunk to 7.3 million

1990s : NYSE remained the world’s largest capital market

Source : Christopher KENNEDY, The Evolution of Great Cities. Urban Wealth and Economic Growth. 2011.

Document 2

Document 3: A city open to the world

4. Websites which can be used

• New York and New Jersey Port Authority website (history information, regional economy and transportation statistics, some maps): www.panynj.gov
• The Department of City Planning's (DCP) site: information on neighborhoods under renovation, access to the Newest New Yorkers on foreign New Yorkers and their integration into the city, census information www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/
• The census office site (you can start with the quick facts about New York and its region and then go deeper by topics) www.census.gov
• a website on the renovation of Lower Manhattan (with useful information on the reconstruction of the World Trade Center) www.renewnyc.com
• The Metropolitan Transport Authority website (with a map of the subway)/maps/submap.html
• NYSE Euronext website ( information in the "visitors" tab) www.nyse.nyx.com
• The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) site (useful information, well presented, videos, audio files, especially in the "news and press" tab, "media" then "infographics", for example "New York at a glance ") www.nycedc.com