World cities

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World cities

• Dominance and dependence
• Changing role of regional centres
• Demise of the small town

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Dominance and dependence

• The relationship of dominance and dependence
  could be said to belong to the interaction
  between world cities and the other urban centres
  in proximity to them.
• World cities, whether they be characterised as
  dominant, major or secondary, are sites of world
  accumulation.

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Dominance and dependence

• Technological dominance and innovation
• Financial dominance in the production and
  distribution of goods and services on a global
  scale.
• The cultural influence that arises from world
  cities is widespread, as is the level of
  strategic decision making.

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Dominance and dependence

• Urban centres on the other hand, have functions
  that show dependence on the world cities.
• Accumulation and the production and distribution
  is only on the national scale
• Technology is often adopted, as there is a
  relatively lower degree of research and
  development.
• A limited cultural influence with some political
  control.
• Eg Perths financial system is dependent on
  Sydney Head Offices.

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Dominance and dependence

• The hierarchy of world cities indicates that
  there is a level of dominance emulating from New
  York, London, Paris and Tokyo over the other
  world cities.
• They have a disproportionate concentration of
  top-level headquarters of the financial,
  industrial, commercial and producer service
  sectors.
• Many of the large industrial TNCs that account
  for nearly 70 of the international trade are
  headquartered in these cities.

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Dominance and dependence

• The massive expansion of the global financial
  industry over the last 20 years has greatly
  increased the global significance of London, New
  York and Tokyo.
• The main financial transactions in shares, bonds,
  loans and foreign currency are dominated by these
  three cities.
• Together with Los Angeles, Frankfurt and Hong
  Kong they provide a 24-hours-a-day global
  coverage of financial transactions.

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Dominance and dependence

• Dominance and dependence also exists between
  world cities and other urban centres.
• An example of this is Sydneys role in contrast
  to the other Australian cities.
• Sydney, as a major world city has 27 head office
  locations for Australias 50 largest
  corporations.

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Dominance and dependence

• Melbourne comprises 16 of these, while Brisbane,
  Perth and Adelaide have less than three in their
  respective cities.
• Sydney is the principal centre for smaller,
  Australian-controlled businesses.
• Nearly half of these have grown through national
  mergers and takeovers.

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Dominance and dependence

• Sydney is the principal financial centre as
  countries like Japan prefer to locate trading,
  marketing and financial companies there.
• Although Melbourne dominates in the areas of
  manufacturing and mining, Sydney is the dominant
  link to the global economy as it represents a
  more recent period of capital accumulation
  associated with economic globalisation,
  especially in the financial sector.

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Dominance and dependence

• The other urban centres that are also state
  capitals only play minor roles in national
  production let alone global accumulation.
• Cities like Brisbane, Darwin, Adelaide, Hobart,
  and Perth have functions that have been largely
  absorbed into Sydney and to a lesser extent
  Melbourne through corporate takeovers.
• These urban centres operate at an intrastate
  level of networking within Australias federal
  administrative structure.
• Further dominance would be exerted from Sydney
  over nearby urban centres like Newcastle and
  Wollongong.
• These relationships of dominance and dependence
  occur on a global scale and these roles are even
  more pronounced when the country has a greater
  number of urban centres and world cities that
  surround a dominant world city.

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Dominance and dependence

• The United States presents clear trends of
  dominance and dependence whereby New York, with a
  group of world cities dependent on it, especially
  for financial transactions.
• Major world cities include Chicago, San
  Francisco, Miami, Boston and Los Angeles.
  Clustered around these world cities are the urban
  centres that have dependent relationships with
  their nearby world cities.
• In the case of Chicago, dependent urban places in
  close proximity include Minneapolis, Milwaukee,
  Indianapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City.

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Dominance and dependence

• The United Kingdom London acts as a centre of
  dependence for other major cities across the
  nation especially for financial transactions.
• Cities such as Birmingham, Newcastle and
  Manchester rely on London for a variety of needs
  and allow them to subsequently be linked into the
  global network.
• Clustered around these major cities are the urban
  centers that have dependent relationship with
  their closest major city. Eg Manchester -
  dependent urban places in close proximity include
  Liverpool, Chester, Preston and Stockport.

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Rural trends

• There have been changes in the relative
  significance of settlements in rural areas at a
  regional and local level.
• Overall, countries like Canada, the United States
  and Australia have witnessed the growth of
  regional centres with a corresponding decline in
  population and economic activity throughout the
  surrounding small towns.

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Urban systems / metropolitan areas

• Urban systems comprise of the national city (eg.
  Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne) that have a
  complex set of functions.
• These include wholesaling, retailing,
  manufacturing, finance and corporate management,
  education, entertainment and health services.
• Metropolitan areas perform these functions for
  smaller urban places and rural areas in their
  general vicinity.
• These metropolitan hinterlands vary greatly in
  size and shape depending on the type of services
  provided.

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Regional centres

• Further down the hierarchy are regional centres.
• In New South Wales, regional centres are defined
  as having populations of 11,000 to about 50,000.
• These centres perform a smaller amount of
  functions and these relate closely to the
  functions of each settlement.
• In the case of Sydney, regional centres would
  include Newcastle, Wollongong, Bathurst, Lismore,
  Tamworth and Dubbo.

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Small towns

• Below these in the hierarchy are the small
  hinterland towns with populations of less than
  11,000 people.
• Taking the regional centre of Dubbo, among the
  many small hinterland towns would be Wellington,
  Nyngan, Bourke, Warren, Peak Hill and Dunedoo.

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Growth and decline

• The trends of growth and decline are evident in
  the Dubbo districts population changes.
• From the period 1976 to 1997, the Dubbo district
  grew by 56.5, while Wellington and Warren
  decreased by 9.0 and 17.4 respectively over the
  same period.

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Growth and decline

• The population of Dubbo grew from 28,064 to
  30,102 between 1991 and 1996 and in 2003 grew
  again to reach 38,937 while Wellington went from
  8648 in 1996 to 8142 in 2004 and Warren from
  1,909 to 1786 over the same period.
• The same decline may be said for Bourke, Dunedoo
  and Nyngan.

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Question

• Why do you think small towns are in decline while
  regional centres increase?

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Reasons for small town decline

• An account of these trends can be attributed to a
  complex set of factors that differ in each
  region.
• However, a common range of causes may begin with
  the recent developments in transport and
  communications making it difficult for small
  towns to survive.
• Business services are more centralised and this
  has cascaded through the whole urban system from
  the national to the local levels.

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Reasons for small town decline

• For example, the widespread use of cars and the
  construction of sealed roads after 1960 in Dubbo
  has made it easier for people to travel longer
  distances to purchase from a wider variety of
  cheaper goods and services from regional centres
  instead of the local small town.
• A similar effect is in the rapid development in
  telecommunications (eg. e-commerce) and the
  possibility for people in rural areas to purchase
  goods globally.

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Reasons for small town decline

• The result at the local level is the decline,
  demise even of towns, and certainly a marked
  reduction in services that are no longer economic
  in a competitive business environment.
• Regional centres absorb the decline in the
  population and activities of the smaller local
  centres.

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Reasons for small town decline

• The economic restructuring in both the private
  and public sector has allowed the regional
  centres to become increasingly competitive in the
  primary and secondary industries (eg. food
  processing and the supply of frozen meat).
• This is not just on the national scale but also
  on the world market in terms of exporting
  success.
• The encouragement of economies of scale through
  lower operating and land costs has seen many
  businesses prosper in centres like Wagga Wagga.

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Reasons for small town decline

• Retailing has also restructured with the growth
  of large regional shopping centres to the demise
  of the local, small town retailer.
• Public restructuring and the adoption of economic
  rationalism as a result of fiscal restraint have
  seen the rationalisation and centralisation of
  government services in the regional centres.

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Reasons for small town decline

• It is well known that returns on agricultural
  production have reduced rural incomes relative to
  those families from the cities.
• As a result, some 431 centres with populations
  less than 4,000 will struggle to survive.
• Many of these towns are losing the infrastructure
  necessary to maintain a viable community.
• Drought has also been a major push factor from
  small towns.

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Reasons for small town decline

• Between 1981 and 1998, more than a quarter of the
  bank branches in rural NSW were closed.
• More recently the ABC reported last year that St
  George has planned to close up to 84 of its
  rural banking over the counter firms.

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Responses

• One response has been the development of Elders
  rural bank has now establish 400 over the counter
  branches in 3 years and over 200 through Bendigo
  Bank across Australia.
• At a joint conference in Adelaide between
  government officials and representatives of Rural
  Bank, Senator Chapman announced the success of
  both Elders Rural and Bendigo Bank in assisting
  with the development of community services and
  infrastructure in small rural towns.

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Responses

• Another response to decline by communities and
  local councils is the diversification in the
  economic base of the small town.
• The Carrathool Shire Region has towns like Leeton
  and Ivanhoe and these have actively invested in
  infrastructure that would further promote
  tourism, especially Japanese tourists who seek a
  rural setting.
• The income from tourism helps to act as a safety
  net during periods of poor agricultural returns.
• This approach is important as thousands of jobs
  in agriculture are lost each year.