The last half-century was the age of the megacity. The next will belong to their smaller, humbler urban relations.

 

GREAT CITIES like London, New York and Tokyo loom large in our imaginations. They are the places people still associate with fortune, fame and the future. They can dominate na­tional economies, and politics. The last half century has been their era, as the number of cities with more than 10 million people grew from two to 20, as now famous names like Rio, Mexico City and Mumbai joined the list. But the typical growth rate of the population within a megacity has slowed over the last five years, and their number is expected to stagnate in the next quarter century. Instead, the coming years will belong to a smaller, far humbler relation— the Second City.

Within a year or so, more people will live in cities than in the countryside for the first time in human history: the 21st century will be an urban one. But increasingly, the urban core itself is downsizing. Already, half the city dwellers in the world live in metropolises with less than half-a-million residents. Second Cities—from exurbs to regional hubs, resort towns to provincial capitals—are booming. Between 2000 and 2015, the world's smallest cities (with under 500,000 people) will grow by 23 percent, while the next smallest (1 million to 5 million people) will grow by 27 percent. This trend is the result of seismic shifts, including the global real-estate bubble; increasing international migration; cheaper transport; new technologies, and the fact that the baby-boom generation is reaching retirement age.

Aspiring middleweights like Toulouse, Munich and Las Vegas, or former unknowns like Florianopolis (Brazil), Ghaziabad (India), Goyang (South Korea) and Fukuoka (Japan) may not remain unknown for much longer. Boomtowns breed ambitious city fathers, so it's hardly surpris­ing that Toulouse is competing with Paris to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, or that Fukuoka is challenging Tokyo for the same honor.

In a way, the emergence of Second Cities has flowed natu­rally (if unexpectedly) from the earlier success of the megacities. In the 1990s, megalopolises* boomed as global markets did. This was particularly true in metropolitan areas with high-tech or "knowledge based" industries like finance - witness the renaissance of New York and London, and the explosion of growth in Shanghai or Hong Kong. Bonuses got bigger, bankers got richer and real-estate prices in the world's most-sought-after cities soared. The result has been the creation of "gated regions"—places like New York, London, Tokyo - in which both the city and many of the surrounding suburbs have become unaffordable for all but the very wealthy.

One reaction to this phenomenon is further sprawl - high prices in the urban core and traditional suburbs drive people to distant exurbs with extreme commutes into big cities. In the major U.S. metropolitan areas, average commut­ing times have doubled to about 90 minutes over the last 15 years, making once rural places like Pike County, Pennsylvania, viable dormitories for workers employed in New York. A place like Las Vegas is now actually a kind of suburb of Los Angeles. There are plenty of people who make the six-hour one-way drive a few times a week. And while the extreme commute is a longstanding tradition in Japan, it is spreading to Europe. Brighton, a once seedy beach resort about an hour by train from the capital, is now "London by the Sea," populated by arts and media types. House prices there have boomed lately.

Why does one town become a booming Second City while another fails? The answer hinges on whether a community has the wherewithal to exploit the forces pushing people and busi­nesses out of the megacities. One key is excellent transport links, especially to the biggest commercial hubs. Europe's cheap airlines have given new life to any number of provincial capitals, from Glasgow to Bologna. Estate agents estimate that a new Ryanair or easyJet link to a given city can immediately raise property prices in the area by 30 percent or more. In Asia, the number of cheap, short flights between cities is also growing.

Another growth driver for Second Cities is the decentralization of work, driven in large part by new technologies. While more financial deals are done now in big capitals like New York and London than ever before, it's also clear that plenty of jobs in booming service industries like banking, entertainment and high tech are flowing to places like Dubai, Las Vegas, Tallinn and Cape Town. These places have not only improved their Internet backbones, but often have tech parks and universities that turn out the kinds of talent that populates growth industries.

Today it's easier for Second Cities to build self-sustaining economies, independent of megacities, as firms and workers look to avoid the problems of major urban centers. "Economically, after a city reaches a certain size, its productivity starts to fall," notes Mario Pezzini, head of the regional-competitiveness division of the OECD in Paris. He puts the tipping point at about 6 million people, after which real estate costs, travel times, and the occasional chaos (witness the recent Paris riots) create a situation in which the center of the city may be a great place, but only for the rich, and the outlying areas become harder to live and work in."

Meanwhile, the democratization of the good life - even small towns now have good sourdough bread, international newspapers - means that people no longer have to choose between the culture and chaos of the big city, or the ease and boredom of everything else. Pseudo-European-style cafe cul­ture is cropping up in American towns like West Palm Beach, and European minicities like Groningen, in the Netherlands, draw millions of tourists with Philippe Starck-designed muse­ums and renovated downtowns. Retiring baby boomers are giv­ing new life (and money) to a host of sun-belt cities in the Unit­ed States, as well as many Provencal and Tuscan towns.

Immigrants play a big role, too. In places like Las Vegas, they're morphing from cheap labor to a new middle class re­shaping the character of the city. In the U.K., hundreds of thou­sands of Eastern European immigrants have helped galvanize the capital and smaller northern and coastal cities, where work­ers in agriculture, construction and lower-level service jobs are sorely needed. Ultimately, they are expected to take their earnings home, where they are likely to seek property not in Prague or Warsaw, but in less-expensive Brno or Cracow. That's a big reason why the 60 Central and Eastern European cities with 500,000 or more people are expected to be among the hottest places for corporate relocation in the next few years.

All this means, of course, that second cities won't stay small.

 

NOTES:

*megalopolise – a term coined by the geographer Jean Gottman to identify a new economic power corridor Boston - New York – Washington

Ryanair -  is an Irish low-cost airline with its head office at Dublin Airport. The airline has been characterised by rapid expansion, and the success of its low-cost business model.

 

 

vocabulary work

13 Look at the words in bold and try to explain them.

 

⇐ Предыдущая3456789101112Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: