There are two types of cities that really matter: the world city and the global city. New York City is an example of a world city; Seattle of a global city. The world city is defined by the size and composition of its population; the global city is defined by the extent of its connections to international markets. The world city is what always the global city desires to become. The world city has character; the global city doesn’t—in appearance and function, it is to the network of capital accumulation and distribution what a circuit board is to the system of a computer.
During the booming 90s, the cores of world cities were gentrified. In our post-crash times, they are being plutocratized. Only the very rich can afford to live in the centers of NYC, Paris, London, and Hong Kong. As for the upper parts of the middle class, they are moving out of the world city to either suburbs or to global cities. But as all global cities want, one, to become world cities and, two, are caught in the process of gentrification, we can assume plutocratization to also be their terminal point.
.
