Politics/Cultures of Cities Group B - Thursdays

This photograph of Big Ben in London first shows perhaps the most important element in a metropolis, time.  Time is universal and the acting force that makes a place into a space.  It is the driving force behind the metropolis as fluid entity that is always changing or adapting to its changing inhabitants, whether they be worker drones bogged down in a machine or sub-cultural malcontents trying to be unique or recognized in a city that often renders individuals invisible.  Big Ben, or my representation of time, has remained largely unchanged in a global city that that has changed tremendously since Big Ben was first built. Additionally, I purposely chose a blurry shot to help represent the blur of time of time passing and movement within the metropolis and also like a memory becomes blurry over time.

Ive chosen two images that depict the various layers of globalization.  The images from Japan and New York City, respectively, in one picture reveal the localizing of a global entity and in another juxtapose the workings of the informal economy in a global city with the "legitimate" advertisements of megacoporations.  I found that these pictures, the second one in particular, can be related to one of the more notable scholar's weve read, Saskia Sassen's, fundemental question about global cities: "Whose city  is it?".

http://benross.net/images/blog%20images/08-09-30_japan/13.JPG

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ZZ-CqtHjAnk/Rk4MyYHMQ9I/AAAAAAAAA9U/1N1IA3ualmQ/s400/vendors.jpg

This is a picture of a crowded airport.  Airports often work as smaller versions of cities.  The local and the global aspects of a metropolis are both present in an airport.  Airports also often epitomize the cosmopolitan nature of globalized cities.  (see link below)

http://www.airliners.net/photo//0884130/L/

New York City. A giant city packed onto a small island sandwiched between two dirty rivers. To me, the true 'global city' is one in which constituent networks (economic, financial, social, political, technological, etc. embodied in the first image) of highly-order agglomeration economies are grounded. In addition, they also host concentrations of routine ‘servicing’ industries – domestic work, hospitality, cleaning, etc – that provide for those working in the upper echelons of the global economy. They are, therefore, places of extremes: where society, according to Sassen (1991), is at it most polarized and unequal.

 Mrazek writes about the revolutionaries and political figures he speaks with and encounters in Jakarta. He later quotes Thucydides, the Greek historian: In ancient Athens, "the first signs of anarchy occured at funerals" (443).  The author uses a motif of death and phoenix-like rebirth throught his piece. Does the layeredness of Jakarta, past and present, enable beneficial (here: anarchic) chaos that asserts itself against the city's structure? By chaos, I mean overt subversion as well as more subtle challenges, planned or not.

In class on Tuesday in our groups we talked about how certain neighborhoods become exclusive either by use of physical barriers or psycological ones.  Can any connections be from tuesday conversation that relate to Jakarta?