i found this article interesting and was hoping to start a conversation both on the merits of the argument that cities might function better as autonomous entities as well as personal experiences with this phenomenon.
living in chicago which is much smaller than the cities discussed in this article, i notice many of the symptoms of a disconnect between the city and the rest of the state.
How many would agree that living in NY or Chicago, perhaps even LA or other large metro areas feel as if their cities are in fact independent from the states or countries they belong to?
on a side bar, how does a city acting as a part of a state or country rectify the obvious differences in need between itself and its sub-urban and rural counterparts?
i thought this was an interesting article, too. in the US it is fair to equate the larger states with european countries...illinois might be the netherlands, for example, based on population.
i don't know quite how to address the value judgment of whether cities might function better if they were independent or not, but i too noticed (when living in chicago, specifically) that i identified much much more with the city of chicago than the state of illinois...indeed, i can't even remember what the illinois state flag looks like but i can spot the chicago city flag in an instant.
indeed, there was such an adversarial/love-hate relationship between chicago and "downstate" that most people i knew liked either one or the other, but rarely both.
only twice did i ever go outside the chicago area into "downstate" illinois. when i moved TO chicago, and when i moved FROM chicago.
the chicago area has like 75% of illinois population, supplies most of the state's political leadership, and probably most of its tax dollars.
but strangely, here in texas...probably most residents of houston and dallas strongly identify with the state of texas more than their home city. perhaps only in austin do people really not relate with the state outside the city limits.
of course this article was about mega-primate cities and large countries, talking about austin and dallas seems rather silly when compared with mumbai or tokyo.
It's all about economics. No such a big city as Shangai, Mumbai or Mexico city could live or exist without their surroundings.
So indipendency is just an economical issue.
very much so depends on the context.... in wisconsin, i identified more with wisconsin than with milwaukee (someone from madison would say the opposite). here in los angeles, i identify more with los angeles than california.
tokyo IS a state. at least when i write my address it says tokyo-TO (which means something like metropolitan area), Japan. Nothing else.
but the kicker is that tokyo actually spreads well into its neighboring prefectures. 30 million people jes don fit into the old city limits anymore.
in the case of japn it is sort of the city of tokyo first, then the rest of the country, rather than city vs. state. It works that way politically too. in fact most of the national planning laws are based on tokyo's requirements, even though the rest of the country ain't nothing like tokyo. funny, no?
santa monica used to be a socialist republic. but it's got invaded by stake holders and hoteliers from north not to mention people who invested in tourist revenues. we are now a stronghold of a ruthless larger empire without any particular incentives for working class who has been uprooted by condominiums and lofts and entertainment industry's ah so creative offices not to mention hi end cup cakes.
people from here know what i mean.
What about selfdefense? Infrastructure? How much of London, Shanghai, Tokyo and New York is actually financed and supported by outside tax revenue? How many of the actual workers live in different cities? What would have happened to Greece without 300 spartans?
Yeah, ok, so when I see this type of article I think of any number of writings by Saskia Sassen, Arjun Appadurai, David Harvey, Anthony Giddens, etc. I guess that there are different ways to parse it ... the labeling of the "global city-states" could be attributable to a geographically-based division of labor, etc. etc. This article was a little too pithy and left me wanting for more explanations.
as stated by the end of the article, this is nothing new. that many cross national mediterranean port cities have much in common and sets them apart from their current national brethen-cities is testimony to that effect. very simply, nationalism is a historically newer phenomenon than trade. in fact what is far newer is the formation of common monetary pool that distributes wealth vis a vis national institutions over the more abstract ungeographical country. perhaps this might occur in the economy of an empire, but always with an underlying violence (war, collonialism,protection) and with the pool,which is more like a river, flowing oneway into the royal institution. that one finds novelty in a city that trangresses national identity...well its just like a hillybilly in Times Square...stunned stoopid like a moth headbanging on a lightbulb 'oh ma gaaad'
corporations are corporations not new city states, be they more or less influential. if humans grew wings'n'halos, wd you call them angels?
impressionist semantic poppycock.
in Croatia we have the same situation with our capital, Zagreb. The geo position of the country is such that in the middle, it is litterally empty, whole cities (tough they are not actually, since no one is living in them) and areas are 80 % depopulated. One of the reasons why Zagreb is so strong is beacause of it´s mayor, who is really trying his best to attract the investors into our town.
However, i think that the right question isn´t why are big cities/capitals so big and strong, but more why are all the rest in the certain country so economically week and ignored by the governments. It should never be questioned why is sth strong, but more why is sth week.
As I've always said...if you only go to NYC or LA you haven't "seen" America. The same goes for London and the UK, Paris and France, Toyko and Japan, etc. etc.
Large cities do tend to be completely divorced from the countryside around them and the people living in those cities I would hesitate to associate with the more rural people outside those cities. Quite the sociology at play.
Paris is not France...
Paris and Parisians are "unique"
Fill in any major city within a country in the fields above. But what about agriculture, wait, that doesn't matter it just gets shipped from some 1500 miles away no matter where you live. (in the U.S. at least)
What we always said in Philly: the state of Pennsylvania is made up of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Kentucky in between. (Of course now that I've spent time in Kentucky I can't say that anymore - I'll have to switch "Alabama" for Kentucky. Kentucky seems to be so much a unique character-place of its own, like Texas. Digression over.) I spent ten years in Philly and always self-identified as a Philadelphian, never ever as a Pennsylvanian. My first architect registration was from the state of Pannsylvania, that was the only way I had any real interaction with the state.
I don't know much about Indianapolis, but it seems closely identified with the state surrounding it. The same felt true to me in Phoenix, Arizona and Detroit, Michigan. Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon, on the other hand, each felt like islands of intellectual liberalism in seas of rural - umm what was the word cellardoor used? - hillbillyism. That'll do.
Think of the analogy - city:surrounding rural area as brain:body.
As for agriculture: my belief is that local food is going to be a enormous industry in the coming decades. Perhaps an enormous cottage industry, as I think people in cities are going to start demanding seasonal organic local food grown by personal farmers in whom they have a stake. So if anything I see the connection between city and rurall surround becoming stronger in the future.
Hmm, shouldn't it rather be the opposite of that vado said? I agree to the spirit of it, but today I think that the cities are pretty self-sustaining. I know of course that they need food and resources from the country, but in todays market economy they can buy that from anywhere. It is rather the rural countryside that is dependent on the taxes from the big cities!
The whole discussion is extremely interesting in my opinion, and we are certainly seeing a transformation away from the old nation-states. What we are getting instead is a complex interaction of communities, citites, regions, countries and international institutions, as the multi-national companies or the UN and WTO.
I see this as something incredibly positive, but there is one problem. The nation-states were a geographical division, where every piece of land was part of one unity, and therefore given equal protection/rights (ok, that's only in the ideal scenario, but still). How do we assure that everyone stays in and isn't excluded from social safetety systems in the future scenarios? How does society provide for the people that can't provide for themselves?
(And I really agree with liberty on the agriculture thing.)
or, seeing it the other way, the UN and the WTO are not a challenge to nation-states but rather are a global reverberation of the global order of nation states. that aid and trade in those institutions are distributed over national units is a natural consequence of nation states coming together to affirm, globally, their order. this, the ability to transcend nation-state restrictions (passports, visas and so on) vis a vis internet to critique each other is, censorship precluded, a better example of national transgression. also merely being a big multinational company/oragnization does not necessarly entail a non-national disposition. where there is a strict heirarchy of ownership and power, there will be a heirarchy of national identification. thus, for instance, we find that outsourcing, although being cross continental, is strictly an echo of the outsourcing within the outsourced with minimal contamination of the latter on the former. so phoneoperating indians who have never been to england will mimic a generic british accent and etiquette and be given seminars on british weather. the chinese factory workers will make levis jeans exactly as they were made in the states and levis=states. the reason d'etre of the company is a constant insulated from the de-contextualizing. it is this strict heirarchy and the strict scope of production that hinders the multi-nationals from becoming truly multi (and therefor non-) national.
or, seeing it the other way, the UN and the WTO are not a challenge to nation-states but rather are a global reverberation of the global order of nation states. that aid and trade in those institutions are distributed over national units is a natural consequence of nation states coming together to affirm, globally, their order. this, the ability to transcend nation-state restrictions (passports, visas and so on) vis a vis internet to critique each other is, censorship precluded, a better example of national transgression. also merely being a big multinational company/oragnization does not necessarly entail a non-national disposition. where there is a strict heirarchy of ownership and power, there will be a heirarchy of national identification. thus, for instance, we find that outsourcing, although being cross continental, is strictly an echo of the outsourcing within the outsourced with minimal contamination of the latter on the former. so phoneoperating indians who have never been to england will mimic a generic british accent and etiquette and be given seminars on british weather. the chinese factory workers will make levis jeans exactly as they were made in the states and levis=states. the reason d'etre of the company is a constant insulated from the de-contextualizing. it is this strict heirarchy and the strict scope of production that hinders the multi-nationals from becoming truly multi (and therefor non-) national.
this, to me is a fascinating question, and i'm sad to have joined the discussion so late.
i think that economically it could be figured out fairly easily whether independence would be the most favorable (i have a hunch that it would, as long as trade policies remain intact).
politically this is a challenge, and militarily. i think it would be hard to argue that most coutries exist as collections of like-minded people that share a set of values; rather, they have agreed to collude initially for the sake of free trade and combined military strength.
the real question to consider is, had new york been independent of the US, what would have been the international reverberations of the september 11 attacks? would ny maintain a relationship with the US as allies? would ny be a protectorate?
Here here Libertybell-
I identify as a Philadephian, not a Pennsylvanian. As I understand it, the rest of the state does not like the Philadelphia metro area. Wishes we were part of New Jersey. That includes Pittsburg. But like others said about there respective locales, Phila. is much of the population, economy and wealth of PA. Many people in Philly (metro) consider their geography as a 50-90 mile radius from city hall- jersey shore to lancaster county, just below allentown down into Delaware. If you are in Philly the bigger discussion is if you are in the city or in the suburbs.
All in all, I tend to hate these binary discussions, since there are so many overlaps and shades of gray...although it is interesting to hear what others experience elsewhere.
i always seem to live in those cities that don't feel like part of their states:
new orleans in LA
minneapolis in MN
louisville in KY
usually there is some animosity toward these cities from the states at large which i always found interesting since our taxes collected from these metro areas' make up a huge part of the states' total revenues. and we always get less back, of course.
one of the interesting things ive always noticed living in chicago for 5 years now is that beyond just a lack of identification with the rest of the state (downstate as its commonly called here), there is that, like steven ward just mentioned, there is animosity from the rest of the state towards those in the city, and often times that animosity is returned.
Politically and economically there is ALWAYS a struggle, as im sure is true in most large cities, about the dispersal of funds. RTA is always in a battle to get more money to provide better service to the city and suburbs, and is in that battle because politicians from rural areas dont want to give up their own money for a project they dont see direct benefit from.
Personally i feel like as cities continue to grow, with the 50/50 urban to rural balance almost met, cities will require more autonomy to sustain themselves while supporting their citizens.
a reason for this being that it is an exponential relationship between population and money needed to support it.
"...an exponerntial realtionship between population and money needed to support it."
That is quite a statement, to me it would seem to be exacltly the opposite, the more dispersed people are, the higher the costs per person to support them: longer cables, longer roads, more cellphone base stations, more hospitals, longer transportation.... Sure, the local economy will be much bigger, mainly due to incresed service sector, but that will only dillute the money needed to actually support ppl (tax money).
And for cellardoor, " also merely being a big multinational company/organization does not necessarily entail a non-national disposition".
Well, what I am mainly thinking about is multinational companies that actually transcend national government in terms of competence, risk management and "future stewardship". That make their money by financing on a higher hierarchical level than banks, making risk assessment and long term planning their primary mean of capital gain. Companies that finance so many projects that their interests go much further than a developer's (who only wants returns for the unique investment) or a government's (which is limited by term lengths and by competence). Companies that see economically what we as architects quite often argue on ideological basis, and can require developers to hire an responsible architect rather than one that will allow them to make quick money.
It seems that these companies have evolved quite a way these day, and for the first time have the ability to translate long term well being of a society into an economical interest.
Also, "does not necessarily entail a non-national disposition", I don't think is the point. It is not about being exclusively something, but inclusively. Weather they are national is not important, what is important is that they are ALSO international.
Cities are not going to exclude their near surrounding, but they are going to include a lot more than they have historically.
fortunately Barcelona is not independent from the rest of the country (Catalonia), even if of course it is its main metropolis and most Catalonia revolves around her, ... but at the same time (and now, unfortunately) BCN isn't that independent from the Spanish State... but, oh well, we keep trying..
oh, of course i meant the spanish state. I think of Barcelona as the great queen of a wonderful Catalan people - and yet, a very wise and giving lady who will welcome anyone into her home, as she did me. And I see her strong and independent. (i will be moving there soon to help you keep trying!)
originally i am from greece but i am deeply and forever in love with BCN. planning on moving permanently there in one year. an ideal city, people, and way of life that should inspire every architect and human being...
Growing up in Fort Worth, I always felt my allegiance was more to Fort Worth in opposition to Dallas than to Texas in opposition to the rest of the USA. Of course, when I went to college in New England, people always identified me more with Texas than with Fort Worth. Interestingly enough, many of my close friends in college were from Texas. Do not take this to mean that I do not hold Texas as a state as a strong part of my identity; growing up anywhere in Texas imbues everyone with a strong sense of Texas nationalism.
Did you know that as a condition of joining the USA in 1845, after being a sovereign nation for 9 years and fighting its own war of independence from Mexico, Texas reserves several unique rights among the states? For instance, and perhaps the most significant symbolically, the Lone Star flag may be flown at the same height as the Stars and Stripes, with the same size flag. Also, Texas has the right (at least on paper) to have its own navy. They don't have any ships of their own except for some mothballed ones and maybe a sailing vessel, but several ships of the US Navy are honorarily assigned a symbolic relationship to the Texas Navy.
Also, Texas retains control of the water up to 12 miles off its coast, whereas this water is Federal jurisdiction in every other state. This fact has played a part in the recent race for offshore wind farms. While the Cape Wind project has to gain the approval of many state and Federal agencies in order to happen, the wind farm proposed for the Gulf of Mexico, near Galveston, only had to gain approval from the Texas Land Office, which administers the 12 miles of water off the shore.
Of course, for the last 3 years I've been living in Denver, and definitely identify more with the city of Denver than with state of Colorado.
Jul 28, 06 1:00 am ·
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Are cities the new country?
i found this article interesting and was hoping to start a conversation both on the merits of the argument that cities might function better as autonomous entities as well as personal experiences with this phenomenon.
living in chicago which is much smaller than the cities discussed in this article, i notice many of the symptoms of a disconnect between the city and the rest of the state.
How many would agree that living in NY or Chicago, perhaps even LA or other large metro areas feel as if their cities are in fact independent from the states or countries they belong to?
on a side bar, how does a city acting as a part of a state or country rectify the obvious differences in need between itself and its sub-urban and rural counterparts?
big topic, but an interesting one
i thought this was an interesting article, too. in the US it is fair to equate the larger states with european countries...illinois might be the netherlands, for example, based on population.
i don't know quite how to address the value judgment of whether cities might function better if they were independent or not, but i too noticed (when living in chicago, specifically) that i identified much much more with the city of chicago than the state of illinois...indeed, i can't even remember what the illinois state flag looks like but i can spot the chicago city flag in an instant.
indeed, there was such an adversarial/love-hate relationship between chicago and "downstate" that most people i knew liked either one or the other, but rarely both.
only twice did i ever go outside the chicago area into "downstate" illinois. when i moved TO chicago, and when i moved FROM chicago.
the chicago area has like 75% of illinois population, supplies most of the state's political leadership, and probably most of its tax dollars.
but strangely, here in texas...probably most residents of houston and dallas strongly identify with the state of texas more than their home city. perhaps only in austin do people really not relate with the state outside the city limits.
of course this article was about mega-primate cities and large countries, talking about austin and dallas seems rather silly when compared with mumbai or tokyo.
It's all about economics. No such a big city as Shangai, Mumbai or Mexico city could live or exist without their surroundings.
So indipendency is just an economical issue.
very much so depends on the context.... in wisconsin, i identified more with wisconsin than with milwaukee (someone from madison would say the opposite). here in los angeles, i identify more with los angeles than california.
tokyo IS a state. at least when i write my address it says tokyo-TO (which means something like metropolitan area), Japan. Nothing else.
but the kicker is that tokyo actually spreads well into its neighboring prefectures. 30 million people jes don fit into the old city limits anymore.
in the case of japn it is sort of the city of tokyo first, then the rest of the country, rather than city vs. state. It works that way politically too. in fact most of the national planning laws are based on tokyo's requirements, even though the rest of the country ain't nothing like tokyo. funny, no?
santa monica used to be a socialist republic. but it's got invaded by stake holders and hoteliers from north not to mention people who invested in tourist revenues. we are now a stronghold of a ruthless larger empire without any particular incentives for working class who has been uprooted by condominiums and lofts and entertainment industry's ah so creative offices not to mention hi end cup cakes.
people from here know what i mean.
you need to quit reading and get me that cd dude!
What about selfdefense? Infrastructure? How much of London, Shanghai, Tokyo and New York is actually financed and supported by outside tax revenue? How many of the actual workers live in different cities? What would have happened to Greece without 300 spartans?
Yeah, ok, so when I see this type of article I think of any number of writings by Saskia Sassen, Arjun Appadurai, David Harvey, Anthony Giddens, etc. I guess that there are different ways to parse it ... the labeling of the "global city-states" could be attributable to a geographically-based division of labor, etc. etc. This article was a little too pithy and left me wanting for more explanations.
corporations are the new city states - michael speaks
unfortunately, so true
dear old jane has a few thoughts on this topic. available for only $9.97 on amazon.com
as stated by the end of the article, this is nothing new. that many cross national mediterranean port cities have much in common and sets them apart from their current national brethen-cities is testimony to that effect. very simply, nationalism is a historically newer phenomenon than trade. in fact what is far newer is the formation of common monetary pool that distributes wealth vis a vis national institutions over the more abstract ungeographical country. perhaps this might occur in the economy of an empire, but always with an underlying violence (war, collonialism,protection) and with the pool,which is more like a river, flowing oneway into the royal institution. that one finds novelty in a city that trangresses national identity...well its just like a hillybilly in Times Square...stunned stoopid like a moth headbanging on a lightbulb 'oh ma gaaad'
corporations are corporations not new city states, be they more or less influential. if humans grew wings'n'halos, wd you call them angels?
impressionist semantic poppycock.
That's right ... Michael Speaks should not be cited as an authority or expert on these types of issues ... he just capitalizes on them.
in Croatia we have the same situation with our capital, Zagreb. The geo position of the country is such that in the middle, it is litterally empty, whole cities (tough they are not actually, since no one is living in them) and areas are 80 % depopulated. One of the reasons why Zagreb is so strong is beacause of it´s mayor, who is really trying his best to attract the investors into our town.
However, i think that the right question isn´t why are big cities/capitals so big and strong, but more why are all the rest in the certain country so economically week and ignored by the governments. It should never be questioned why is sth strong, but more why is sth week.
singapore
high class whores
As I've always said...if you only go to NYC or LA you haven't "seen" America. The same goes for London and the UK, Paris and France, Toyko and Japan, etc. etc.
Large cities do tend to be completely divorced from the countryside around them and the people living in those cities I would hesitate to associate with the more rural people outside those cities. Quite the sociology at play.
Paris is not France...
Paris and Parisians are "unique"
Fill in any major city within a country in the fields above. But what about agriculture, wait, that doesn't matter it just gets shipped from some 1500 miles away no matter where you live. (in the U.S. at least)
What we always said in Philly: the state of Pennsylvania is made up of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Kentucky in between. (Of course now that I've spent time in Kentucky I can't say that anymore - I'll have to switch "Alabama" for Kentucky. Kentucky seems to be so much a unique character-place of its own, like Texas. Digression over.) I spent ten years in Philly and always self-identified as a Philadelphian, never ever as a Pennsylvanian. My first architect registration was from the state of Pannsylvania, that was the only way I had any real interaction with the state.
I don't know much about Indianapolis, but it seems closely identified with the state surrounding it. The same felt true to me in Phoenix, Arizona and Detroit, Michigan. Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon, on the other hand, each felt like islands of intellectual liberalism in seas of rural - umm what was the word cellardoor used? - hillbillyism. That'll do.
Think of the analogy - city:surrounding rural area as brain:body.
As for agriculture: my belief is that local food is going to be a enormous industry in the coming decades. Perhaps an enormous cottage industry, as I think people in cities are going to start demanding seasonal organic local food grown by personal farmers in whom they have a stake. So if anything I see the connection between city and rurall surround becoming stronger in the future.
And what vado said above is of course correct.
God, A enormous industry?!?!? So sorry, make that AN enormous industry.
Hmm, shouldn't it rather be the opposite of that vado said? I agree to the spirit of it, but today I think that the cities are pretty self-sustaining. I know of course that they need food and resources from the country, but in todays market economy they can buy that from anywhere. It is rather the rural countryside that is dependent on the taxes from the big cities!
The whole discussion is extremely interesting in my opinion, and we are certainly seeing a transformation away from the old nation-states. What we are getting instead is a complex interaction of communities, citites, regions, countries and international institutions, as the multi-national companies or the UN and WTO.
I see this as something incredibly positive, but there is one problem. The nation-states were a geographical division, where every piece of land was part of one unity, and therefore given equal protection/rights (ok, that's only in the ideal scenario, but still). How do we assure that everyone stays in and isn't excluded from social safetety systems in the future scenarios? How does society provide for the people that can't provide for themselves?
(And I really agree with liberty on the agriculture thing.)
or, seeing it the other way, the UN and the WTO are not a challenge to nation-states but rather are a global reverberation of the global order of nation states. that aid and trade in those institutions are distributed over national units is a natural consequence of nation states coming together to affirm, globally, their order. this, the ability to transcend nation-state restrictions (passports, visas and so on) vis a vis internet to critique each other is, censorship precluded, a better example of national transgression. also merely being a big multinational company/oragnization does not necessarly entail a non-national disposition. where there is a strict heirarchy of ownership and power, there will be a heirarchy of national identification. thus, for instance, we find that outsourcing, although being cross continental, is strictly an echo of the outsourcing within the outsourced with minimal contamination of the latter on the former. so phoneoperating indians who have never been to england will mimic a generic british accent and etiquette and be given seminars on british weather. the chinese factory workers will make levis jeans exactly as they were made in the states and levis=states. the reason d'etre of the company is a constant insulated from the de-contextualizing. it is this strict heirarchy and the strict scope of production that hinders the multi-nationals from becoming truly multi (and therefor non-) national.
or, seeing it the other way, the UN and the WTO are not a challenge to nation-states but rather are a global reverberation of the global order of nation states. that aid and trade in those institutions are distributed over national units is a natural consequence of nation states coming together to affirm, globally, their order. this, the ability to transcend nation-state restrictions (passports, visas and so on) vis a vis internet to critique each other is, censorship precluded, a better example of national transgression. also merely being a big multinational company/oragnization does not necessarly entail a non-national disposition. where there is a strict heirarchy of ownership and power, there will be a heirarchy of national identification. thus, for instance, we find that outsourcing, although being cross continental, is strictly an echo of the outsourcing within the outsourced with minimal contamination of the latter on the former. so phoneoperating indians who have never been to england will mimic a generic british accent and etiquette and be given seminars on british weather. the chinese factory workers will make levis jeans exactly as they were made in the states and levis=states. the reason d'etre of the company is a constant insulated from the de-contextualizing. it is this strict heirarchy and the strict scope of production that hinders the multi-nationals from becoming truly multi (and therefor non-) national.
this, to me is a fascinating question, and i'm sad to have joined the discussion so late.
i think that economically it could be figured out fairly easily whether independence would be the most favorable (i have a hunch that it would, as long as trade policies remain intact).
politically this is a challenge, and militarily. i think it would be hard to argue that most coutries exist as collections of like-minded people that share a set of values; rather, they have agreed to collude initially for the sake of free trade and combined military strength.
the real question to consider is, had new york been independent of the US, what would have been the international reverberations of the september 11 attacks? would ny maintain a relationship with the US as allies? would ny be a protectorate?
Here here Libertybell-
I identify as a Philadephian, not a Pennsylvanian. As I understand it, the rest of the state does not like the Philadelphia metro area. Wishes we were part of New Jersey. That includes Pittsburg. But like others said about there respective locales, Phila. is much of the population, economy and wealth of PA. Many people in Philly (metro) consider their geography as a 50-90 mile radius from city hall- jersey shore to lancaster county, just below allentown down into Delaware. If you are in Philly the bigger discussion is if you are in the city or in the suburbs.
All in all, I tend to hate these binary discussions, since there are so many overlaps and shades of gray...although it is interesting to hear what others experience elsewhere.
i always seem to live in those cities that don't feel like part of their states:
new orleans in LA
minneapolis in MN
louisville in KY
usually there is some animosity toward these cities from the states at large which i always found interesting since our taxes collected from these metro areas' make up a huge part of the states' total revenues. and we always get less back, of course.
one of the interesting things ive always noticed living in chicago for 5 years now is that beyond just a lack of identification with the rest of the state (downstate as its commonly called here), there is that, like steven ward just mentioned, there is animosity from the rest of the state towards those in the city, and often times that animosity is returned.
Politically and economically there is ALWAYS a struggle, as im sure is true in most large cities, about the dispersal of funds. RTA is always in a battle to get more money to provide better service to the city and suburbs, and is in that battle because politicians from rural areas dont want to give up their own money for a project they dont see direct benefit from.
Personally i feel like as cities continue to grow, with the 50/50 urban to rural balance almost met, cities will require more autonomy to sustain themselves while supporting their citizens.
a reason for this being that it is an exponential relationship between population and money needed to support it.
"...an exponerntial realtionship between population and money needed to support it."
That is quite a statement, to me it would seem to be exacltly the opposite, the more dispersed people are, the higher the costs per person to support them: longer cables, longer roads, more cellphone base stations, more hospitals, longer transportation.... Sure, the local economy will be much bigger, mainly due to incresed service sector, but that will only dillute the money needed to actually support ppl (tax money).
And for cellardoor, " also merely being a big multinational company/organization does not necessarily entail a non-national disposition".
Well, what I am mainly thinking about is multinational companies that actually transcend national government in terms of competence, risk management and "future stewardship". That make their money by financing on a higher hierarchical level than banks, making risk assessment and long term planning their primary mean of capital gain. Companies that finance so many projects that their interests go much further than a developer's (who only wants returns for the unique investment) or a government's (which is limited by term lengths and by competence). Companies that see economically what we as architects quite often argue on ideological basis, and can require developers to hire an responsible architect rather than one that will allow them to make quick money.
It seems that these companies have evolved quite a way these day, and for the first time have the ability to translate long term well being of a society into an economical interest.
Also, "does not necessarily entail a non-national disposition", I don't think is the point. It is not about being exclusively something, but inclusively. Weather they are national is not important, what is important is that they are ALSO international.
Cities are not going to exclude their near surrounding, but they are going to include a lot more than they have historically.
Expanding the subject, "are Regions the new Countries?", here is an interesting article from Newsweek:
http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/eddesk.nsf/All/A1B0D638B680C1A0CA256C8900822EC9!open
About regons and regionality in an expanding Europe
how is it that this thread hasn't merged with the balkanization thread yet?
suprised no one has mentioned barcelona?? she is an independent city if i ever knew one...
fortunately Barcelona is not independent from the rest of the country (Catalonia), even if of course it is its main metropolis and most Catalonia revolves around her, ... but at the same time (and now, unfortunately) BCN isn't that independent from the Spanish State... but, oh well, we keep trying..
oh, of course i meant the spanish state. I think of Barcelona as the great queen of a wonderful Catalan people - and yet, a very wise and giving lady who will welcome anyone into her home, as she did me. And I see her strong and independent. (i will be moving there soon to help you keep trying!)
originally i am from greece but i am deeply and forever in love with BCN. planning on moving permanently there in one year. an ideal city, people, and way of life that should inspire every architect and human being...
Growing up in Fort Worth, I always felt my allegiance was more to Fort Worth in opposition to Dallas than to Texas in opposition to the rest of the USA. Of course, when I went to college in New England, people always identified me more with Texas than with Fort Worth. Interestingly enough, many of my close friends in college were from Texas. Do not take this to mean that I do not hold Texas as a state as a strong part of my identity; growing up anywhere in Texas imbues everyone with a strong sense of Texas nationalism.
Did you know that as a condition of joining the USA in 1845, after being a sovereign nation for 9 years and fighting its own war of independence from Mexico, Texas reserves several unique rights among the states? For instance, and perhaps the most significant symbolically, the Lone Star flag may be flown at the same height as the Stars and Stripes, with the same size flag. Also, Texas has the right (at least on paper) to have its own navy. They don't have any ships of their own except for some mothballed ones and maybe a sailing vessel, but several ships of the US Navy are honorarily assigned a symbolic relationship to the Texas Navy.
Also, Texas retains control of the water up to 12 miles off its coast, whereas this water is Federal jurisdiction in every other state. This fact has played a part in the recent race for offshore wind farms. While the Cape Wind project has to gain the approval of many state and Federal agencies in order to happen, the wind farm proposed for the Gulf of Mexico, near Galveston, only had to gain approval from the Texas Land Office, which administers the 12 miles of water off the shore.
Of course, for the last 3 years I've been living in Denver, and definitely identify more with the city of Denver than with state of Colorado.
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