Global City Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Global City - Essay Example It was in the 1960s that the world saw crucial changes in the organization of economic activity (Sassen 2001). These changes manifested in the economy of the world, as well as in different forms specific to particular regions. Some of these changes are recognizable even after half a century in the modern world. These include the loss of the power and authority of the industrial centres set up in the US, UK and in Japan as well. Other changes that can be recognized include the rapid increase in the industrialization process of many developing countries and the fast pace of the financial industry in taking on, and making its own, the extensive structure of transactions spread all over the world (Sassen 2001).Sassen (2001) observes that all of these changes had an impact on the connection between the cities and the global economy. In the years immediately after the Second World War, the world saw a dominance of the US over various aspects of the global economy. However, a few decades la ter, the trend started to change, and the early 1970s were witness to dissolution of the control that the US held. With the fall of the central power of the US, a chasm was created in the global economic activity, which was quickly filled by US transnational industrial firms and banks. During the time period after the fall of the transnational elements, the reins and the subsequent nature of the activities of global economy were in the hands of the US transnational firms and banks. However, within the space of a few years, the Third World debt crisis shattered the control of these US firms and banks, resulting in huge losses for them. The international economy was not broken into splinters by the debt crisis; its survival transformed it into a complicated hybrid of duality: â€Å"a spatially dispersed, yet globally integrated organization of economic activity† (Sassen 2001). The creation of spatial dispersal, coupled with global integration, has