The sustainability of competing urban development models-The myth of the global city model

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The sustainability of competing urban development models: The myth of the
global city model
By
Ioana Dumea
Capstone Project
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in Public Policy and Administration
June 2010

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Abstract
The modern intellectual debate regarding the sustainability of urban development models has
predominantly favored the gains of the global city model over the lamentable approach to city-
building displayed by the world’s slums. Drawing on Jeb Brugmann’s city-building approaches,
the elite theory and the large body of work centered on the global city topic, this paper examines
the works of urban and political-science scholars in the attempt to re-assess the sustainability of
these diametrically opposite models of urban development. The comparison, while not resulting
in an outright winner, brings forth a new conceptual paradigm: the overreliance on the global city
model will only exacerbate the formation of the slums and increase the overall instability of the
global economic, political and urban systems.

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Table of Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………4
Literature review……………………………………………………………………………5
I. Locus of economic development: The role of cities in the global economy…………….12
II. Urban development strategies: The global city vs. the city-system ……………………15
II. A. The global city model………………………………………………………..19
II. B. The city-system model: the slums……………………………………………31
III. Economic sustainability of the two models: The lessons of the Great Recession……...39
IV. Socio-cultural sustainability: The effects of the megaproject………………………….49
V. Conclusion: The intersection between the global city and the slum…………………….54
VI. References………………………………………………………………………………58

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Introduction
The change from a manufacturing-based to an information economy has transformed the
appearance and feel of the world’s cities and, in the process, has created a transnational urban
culture. This culture, due to the global forces driving it – transnational corporations, banks,
service firms – can be looked at as a legitimate urban model that delineates space to
accommodate global economic actors rather than preserving local communities. This is the
global city model,1
which is visible in the metro areas of New York, Tokyo or Chicago. At the
other end of the urban development spectrum stands the bottom-up, locally-driven city model
that is fueled by the need of low-income individuals to find economic opportunities and integrate
in the global economy. This is the city-system model,2
exemplified in the Chinatowns of the
developed nations or the slums of the developing countries.
These two models, while diametrically opposite in terms of their origins, are highly
interdependent. The global city model, by entailing the construction of high-income residences
and commercial spaces carves out for itself the best and most valuable property areas of the
urban environment. What and who it displaces seems insignificant in comparison to the urban
riches and global status it promises to the developers and the government authorities that
embrace it. Conversely, the bottom-up process of city-building practiced by migrant populations
all over the world gets ignored for lacking the ability to stimulate the new industries of the
information economy: banking, tourism and telecommunications. In the attempt to envision the
future pressures exerted on the global system by the internal structure of urban centers, this paper
1
Sassen (1994) defines the global city model, as the physical expression of the liberalization of markets,
telecommunications advances,and increased levels of international trade that originated in the capitalist West.Its
main architectural symbols are the high-rises.
2
A city-system is about the interaction between the city’s dwellers to create the most efficient, cohesive and
advantageous urban environment possible. A city becomes an ecosystem,where each group of residents depends on
and supports the life of the existing groups (Brugmann, 2009).

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will compare the two city-building models. The exercise leads to a surprising conclusion: the
fact that the global city model displaces rather than integrates, that its continued growth is
directly fueled by monetary expansion policies, overinvestment practices and financial
speculators, and that it favors the highly educated professionals over all other workers translates
into a myriad of economic and socio-cultural problems3
.
In the words of urban scholar Jeb Brugmann (2009), the practice of developing urban
strategies is about organizing city space in a way that maximizes the ability of its dwellers to
interact and maximize their potential. With cities playing the central role in the globalized
economy, comparing two of the most prevalent urbanization patterns can shed light on the true
and multifaceted pressures globalization exerts on the urban environment. Moreover, as city
managers all over the world are aspiring to secure, or just renew, the “global city” title,
understanding what being a global city really entails – economically, socially, culturally and
environmentally – could re-shift economic development policies at the national, regional and
local levels.
Literature Review
The gradual exposure of local affairs to the influence of global trends, such as the
advances in technology and the liberalization of trade, has incited scholarly work on all sides of
the argumentative spectrum. Proponents of laissez-faire capitalism have hailed the increased
global connectivity by highlighting the ability of underdeveloped nations to acquire wealth as
they participate in the world economy. On the other hand, anti-globalization scholars (Stiglitz,
2006; Barber, 1995) cite a wide-array of problems, ranging from increased social inequalities to
3
Some of the main problems associated with the global city model are overinvestment, economic speculation,
gentrification and increased socio-economic disparities (Brugmann, 2009; Longworth, 2008; Sassen,1994; Barber,
1995).

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decreased democratic activities, to point out the negative consequences of open markets left
unchecked.
In the extensive and highly controversial globalization debate, one of the topics pertinent
to this paper examines the extent to which the liberalization of markets has been the product of
national, transnational or local actors. To sum up all the “competing visions of the global
economic development landscape” is a task reserved for larger works, so the goal here is to
breakdown the dominant theories of the field in order to understand why comparing urban
models is an important piece of the global economic puzzle (Feiock, Moon & Park, 2008).
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (2007) has been an important contributor
to the debate over the true locus of economic development with his most influential work entitled
The world is flat: A brief history of the Twenty-First century. In searching for the key drivers of
the newest wave of globalization, labeled “Globalization 3.0”, Friedman (2007) explored the
main players of the previous globalization phases: the first phase, Globalization 1.0 (1492 –
1800), represented the encounter between the Old World and the New World and was the by-
product of countries and governments competing with one-another for military power, manpower
and gold; the second era of globalization, Globalization 2.0 (the 1800s – 2000) – with moments
of intermission represented by the two World Wars and the Great Depression – became
synonymous with the success of multinational companies to shrink the world through the
Industrial Revolution, innovating means of transportation (the steam engine and the railroad) and
advanced telecommunications (Friedman, 2007, p.9). While governments and multinational
companies surfaced as the main players of the first and second stages of globalization,
Globalization 3.0 distinguished itself from its predecessors due to “the newfound power of

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individuals to collaborate and compete globally [and to form a] flat-world-platform” (Friedman,
2007, p. 10).
In response to Thomas Friedman’s leveled economic playing field, sociologist Richard
Florida (2005) argued that the agglomeration of human capital, infrastructure, culture and
technology within the city limits made urban centers the dominant players on the global scene.
And while he acknowledge the importance of individuals (the “creative class”) in the
information economy, the fact that these resided in the world’s cities made Florida (2005)
entitled to portray the economic world as spiky instead of flat.
The primacy of the urban environment in the global economy is well documented in a
variety of theoretical works (Sassen, 1994; Brugmann, 2009). One of the clearest explanations of
the symbiotic relationship between cities and globalization comes from the famous urban scholar
Saskia Sassen. The first to coin the term “global city,” Sassen (1994) outlined a three-part
argument to explain why cities became the drivers of today’s global economic development: 1)
the current global economy is most predominantly characterized by international financial flows;
2) “the crucial sites for these [international] transactions are financial markets, advanced
corporate service firms, banks and the headquarters of transnational corporations”; 3) these sites
are located in the heart of the cities (p.9)
There are many scholars who dispute the limited choices used to describe the current
global economic environment. Having to choose between Friedman’s flatness and the urban
spikiness, they choose none. Among them are Feiock, Moon & Park (2008) who identify
metropolitan regions as the drivers of global markets. For them, the wealth of one urban
environment is the direct result of its ability to connect with, and use the resources of the
surrounding cities. From another perspective Kantor (2007) explains the newest wave of

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globalization through the critical role national and local governments play in creating the proper
business environments (through lowered taxes, decreased regulations, financial incentives)
needed for cities to compete in the global economy.
And while the competing views on the locus of economic development demonstrate the
richness of the subject, ultimately the literature overwhelmingly embraces the City as the
quintessential center of economic opportunities and political freedoms (Magnusson, 1996;
Norquist, 1998; Sassen, 1994; Brugmann, 2009). The City is the place where density, diversity
and ideas mix to create economies of scale, test political credos and build the social patterns
defining the direction of entire civilizations (Norquist, 1998; Brugmann, 2009; Friedman, 2007).
The City never sleeps; it is defined by constant action. The “global city” then becomes only a
small piece of the entire urban puzzle, limited to analyzing the effects of global markets exposure
on those multidimensional spheres of city life.
Since the global city literature is relatively young, dating back to the 1980s, the studies
done on the delineation of space in the global city indicate a commonly-shared development
pattern (Grant & Nijman, 2002; Sassen, 1994). In this particular urban fabric, the same economic
actors responsible for driving foreign direct investments to unprecedented levels in the post-1980
era are the same ones that dominate the internal spatial structure of the global city. Thus, as
Sassen (1994) so eloquently explains, in response to the needs of international corporations,
banks and service firms the global cities display distinct spatial patterns: centrally-located
corporate and governmental offices (forming the central business districts), luxurious residential
buildings for the individuals of the top socio-economic strata, but also manufacturing zones, sub-
par housing units and migrant enclaves.

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With the forces of globalization originating predominantly in the West, the theories
attesting to the sustainability of the global city urban model have displayed a certain Western
bias. In many cases, the financial wealth generated in the central business districts has
overshadowed for many modern scholars the socio-economic divide that characterizes the
geography of global cities. This positive portrayal of the global city has translated into the
determination of cities of the developing world to emulate, if not de facto then at least visually,
the symbol that has become synonymous with global wealth: the high-rise buildings.
The causal relationship between impressive constructions and economic power is not a
new revelation. From the earliest historical times, the tendency of the wealthy to dominate their
spatial surroundings has resulted in sumptuous palaces, imposing towers and symbolic
monuments. But contrary to previous eras, the influence of global markets and the capitalist
system has equated power and money with a uniform style of construction and spatial order,
devoid of cultural identity and national meanings. While this new architectural and urban
planning style, called McWorld by some scholars intent on highlighting its corporate origins, has
tried to maximize the availability of housing and raise the quality of life of the urban poor, it has
produced new issues for critique and analysis (Barber, 1995; Marcuse, 1999, Passanti, 1987).
This phenomenon has not been missed by the urban and the political science scholars of
the day. The physical division of the city along income lines and the overreliance on a singular
form of economic development has created a backlash against the promoted socio-economic
resilience of the global city. In his 1995 book Jihad vs McWorld: How globalism and tribalism
are reshaping the world, Benjamin Barber has warned that the organization of spatial patterns to
further encourage free trade, privatization and expansionary monetary policies has translated into
a clear division between the haves and the have-nots. This division is not novel; the poor and the

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rich have been able to co-exist for hundreds of years. The urban space, say some of the critics,
due to its primary purpose of bringing together people from all walks of life, is by nature a
contested space. However, a city dominated by an urban model that sees inhabitants as
consumers and producers, that marginalizes the majority - the poor – to make room for the
minority – the rich –, and that prevents the have-nots from reaping most of the benefits from
their own work is a place awaiting impending crises.
That is a point extensively developed by Mike Davis (2006) in the book Planet of slums.
Taking upon himself to analyze globalization through the lens of the urban landscape, Davis
(2006) discovers that the repeated enforcement of neoliberal practices to solve issues vital to the
well functioning of the urban fabric, housing, community building and economic opportunity,
has only increased the gap between the rich and the poor. So, as the poor find themselves farther
away from jobs, both because the central market locations have been taken over by high-rises
and because the information economy favors the highly educated worker, they fail to climb the
income ladder and leave the familiar environment of the slums. And, as the rural-to-urban
migration patterns causes the slums to grow at a faster rate than the rest of the city population,
the stage is set for the formation of what the author calls a “planet of slums” (Davis, 2006).
Urban scholar Jeb Brugmann (2009), in his book Welcome to the urban revolution: How
cities are changing the world acknowledges the growing socio-economic importance of the
urban poor and channels that awareness to bring forth a new “global city” definition. Contrary to
previous definitions, Brugmann (2009) holds that the unprecedented growth of the urban
population coupled with the greater connectivity between cities have made local affairs
increasingly significant on the global stage. So, instead of labeling “global” only those places

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housing headquarters of corporations and banks, Brugmann (2009) points out that migrant,
bottom-up communities are as important globally as the financial capitals of the world.
Another author trying to dispel the insignificance of the urban poor is Janice Perlman. In
her two studies The myth of marginality and The myth of marginality revisited: The case of
favelas in Rio de Janeiro, 1969-2003, she argues that despite the public stigma attached to the
slums, its inhabitants are important assets to the social, economical, political and cultural
dimensions of the larger urban environment. And, much like Brugmann (2009) who analyzes the
urban planning techniques of the slums to better grasp the effects of global markets on their
survival, Perlman (2003) delves deep into the life of the favelas to make the case against their
replacement with Western, more corporate-friendly forms of social organization.
Studying the building patterns of the global cities alongside that of the slums is not
coincidental. The market liberalization policies spread by Washington Consensus-abiding
organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade
Organization has led to an influx of capital into developing countries. This capital, brought in by
major corporations, banks and service firms, was used to replicate in these host-territories the
same business conditions and luxuries existent in their home-towns. Thus, over time, Mumbai,
Rio de Janeiro, Dubai – to only name a few locations – began displaying the signature structures
of a Western transnational urban model: skyscrapers, malls, luxury hotels. Their rise meant the
displacement of the shabby, improvised, low-income buildings and their residents. In developing
the strategies needed to transform the “Cities of Crisis4
” into the “Cities of Great
4
For Brugmann (2009) a “City of Crisis” is a city where different socioeconomic groups,with distinct city-building
approaches,compete with one another. The competition for urban space becomes a zero-sum game: the more one
group advances,the more the other group loses (p. 130). Mumbai is considered to be this type of city.

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Opportunities5
,” these patterns of development have shown that the urban center cannot be
analyzed in the absence of the city’s margins (Brugmann, 2009; Sassen, 1994).
I. Locus of Economic Development: The Role of Cities in the Global Economy
Long before the State became the single most important political entity, cities have
effectively organized the social, cultural, economic and political aspects of human life. In fact,
by leveraging their geographical location, access to human and material resources and military
power, cities exerted significant political influence. The earliest accounts of cities playing the
role currently bestowed upon the State come from the city-states of ancient Greece. United by
the ideal that human association is the true creator of value, be that economic, cultural or
religious, city-states like Athens and Sparta created flourishing civilizations that dominated well
beyond their physical existence.
Historically, cities continued to be the dominant form of political organization until the
1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which political scholars traced as the birth-date of the modern state.
And while the creation of larger political entities served mostly to cement common languages
and traditions around the all-encompassing concept of nationalism, the cities remained –
according to all available sources – the primary economic and intellectual drivers of their day.
None is more convinced of this fact than the author of the Wealth of cities: Revitalizing
the centers of American life, former Milwaukee mayor John O. Norquist (1998). In his own
words, “people, places and products are the ingredients that, when mixed together in a city,
generate wealth and, in turn, culture and religion” (Norquist, 1998, p.153). Moreover, the organic
formation of urban centers around the benefits of the marketplace, which contrasts heavily with
5
“Cities of Great Opportunities” are the cities that have the economic and human resources needed to maximize
their comparative advantages,but that lack the civil and political alliances instrumental for adopting a coherent city-
building approach (Brugmann, 2009, p. 131).

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the political origins of statehood, entitles Norquist (1998) to support the legitimacy of the City as
the true locus of economic development.
However, in view of the recent advances in technology and communications, some
scholars dispute the predominance of cities in the global economic context. One of them is New
York Times journalist Thomas Friedman. In The world is flat: A brief history of the Twenty-First
century, Friedman (2007) argues that the previous importance of geographic location to the
creation of economic clusters and trade comparative advantages has been diluted by decreased
transportation and communication costs. So what was previously a world dominated by cities,
regions and nations maximizing their natural and human capital became in Friedman’s view a
flat world where individuals held the power. This transfer of economic influence from political
and corporate entities to individuals was the result of a mix of ideas “whose time has come”:
availability of internet, large investments in fiber optic cables, and the change in nature of
international transactions, to only name a few (Friedman, 2007; Kingdon, 1984).
Richard Florida (2005) joins Thomas Friedman in acknowledging the importance of
human capital to the creation of wealth and comparative advantage. However, unlike Friedman,
Florida (2005) maintains that cities still maintain their relevance in the global economy
particularly because the “creative class,” – the educated individuals who create value in the new
information economy – predominantly resides in the urban centers of the world. For Florida, the
world looks more spiky than flat (Feiock, Moon & Park, 2007).
Arguing against both Friedman and Florida’s arguments, Richard C. Feiock, M. Jae
Moon and Hyung Jun Park (2007) highlight the importance of regional economic networks in the
creation of economic wealth. The basis of their argument is that cities, while important, depend
for their labor and industrial supply on the talent and resource pools of neighboring communities.

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For Feiock, Moon and Park (2007), industries do not form individually but in clusters, which
makes regional areas the true environment where economies of scale are created.
The competing views of economic development outlined above are extremely significant
to policy makers, business owners, administrators, scholars and citizens alike. Picking one
theoretical framework above the others carries with it important consequences. If the world is
dominated by regional economic clusters, as Feiock et al. (2007) suggest, than it is important to
find ways to strengthen intergovernmental cooperation and retain the talented workforce within
the metropolitan jurisdictions. If, as Friedman (2007) pointed out, global wealth depends strictly
on individual innovation and ideas, than all governments should focus on improving the quality
of life aspects of their own countries.
However, after taking all arguments into consideration, it is clear that cities remain the
nexus of the global economic life. Friedman (2007), while correct in describing the events that
fueled the spread of globalization forces, ignores the fact that the creative individuals holding the
key to economic innovation choose to live in the urban centers of the world. Based on the last
statistics, there are 3.5 billion of them and their numbers is expected to almost double by the year
2050 (Brugmann, 2009). As far as Feiock, Moon and Park’s (2007) theory is concerned, the
reality is that every region has a dominant metropolis at its center around which suburban life
forms and prospers. Moreover, the government policies that create the business and quality of
life conditions attracting employers and employees alike are municipal in nature, and the record
shows more competition between local governments than a move towards a regional cooperation
model (Goetz & Kayser, 1993; Hamilton, 2002).
As demonstrated, the city continues to be to this day, due to its advantageous mix of
“scale, proximity, and diversity,” the most organic form of economic organization (Norquist,

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1998, p. viii). The city-system, by driving the co-location of suppliers and consumers around the
central economic principle of the mutually-beneficial transaction, is one of the most successful
forms of economic development. Warren Magnusson (1996) describes the allure of city life and
its economic comparative advantage over all other political entities in the following way: “It is
where people come to do things outside the domain of sovereignty, in relative freedom from the
domains of church and state” (p. 256). Therefore, addressing how cities are built and the main
planning strategies deciding how people interact and how resources are divided within the urban
environment is critical to understanding the fragility or strength of the entire global economic
system.
II. Urban development strategies: The global city vs the city-system
Urban scholar Jeb Brugmann (2009), the author of Welcome to the urban revolution:
How cities are changing the world, defines urban strategy as “the practice of shaping the growth
of cities to address global problems and to achieve great ambitions” (p. x). In his attempt to
analyze competing models of urban development Brugmann (2009) ignores the modern
intellectual bias of looking at the process of city-building as an exclusive top-down approach.
Instead, he points out numerous examples where local groups of individuals, united by common
goals and interests, have established thriving urban environments with a socio-economic reach
far beyond their geographical confinement.
One such environment holding hidden urban planning treasures for Brugmann (2009) is
the slum. A slum is generally defined as a “densely populated usually urban area marked by
crowding, dirty run-down housing, poverty, and social disorganization” (Merriam-Webster
Dictionary). None of those characteristics sound appealing to those used to at least a minimum of
Western urban comforts: running water, electricity, plenty of living space. Jeb Brugmann (2009),

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according to his own account, was initially the representation of the skeptic on his first visit to
Mumbai’s largest slum, Dharavi. However, once introduced to the internal layout, diversity and
economic output of Dharavi, Brugmann (2009) uses it as a stepping stone for understanding
urban city building approaches worldwide. I
In developing a theoretical framework around the city-building process, Brugmann
(2009) zones in on what he sees as Dharavi’s main sources of economic strength: cheap land,
low transportation cost, well utilized property space and extremely low business/logistics costs.
All by-products of an astounding conglomeration of people, “16 to 25 times the population
density of greater London,” Dharavi’s economic success can be summed up in two, overarching
concepts: association and competitive advantage (Brugmann, 2009, p. 98). Since the goal of city-
building is to maximize the benefits of association and advantage, Brugmann (2009) evaluates
urban development in terms of four city-building approaches: 1) ad-hoc building; 2) city-
systems; 3) city-models and 4) the master-planned city.
Ad-hoc building has the end user in mind. Whether the process involves the construction
of a single edifice or a collection of buildings, the main goal is to fulfill the needs of the
inhabitant(s). The main criticism Brugmann (2009) has regarding this type of construction is that
it is experimental and “does not create any purposeful nature for the city” (p.103). His comment
is relevant: if anybody would be allowed to build whatever they wanted wherever they wanted,
without consideration for the value and function of the adjacent buildings, the city would become
a maze with no rhyme or reason. Most importantly, without regulation, this type of layout can
negate the actual growth potential that an agglomeration of economic interests brings to the
urban environment.

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The second city-building approach Jeb Brugmann (2009) identifies is the city-system.
Unlike the individualistic and “experimental” nature of ad-hoc building, a city-system centers on
the interaction between a city’s dwellers in order to create the most efficient, cohesive and
advantageous urban environment possible. A city becomes an ecosystem, where each group of
residents depends on and supports the life of the existing groups. Brugmann (2009) refers to this
type of city-building process as “co-creating” and sees it as the best way to maximize the
economic and social benefits of a high density area (p.105). Most migrant enclaves in the major
European and American cities seem to be built as city-systems. The slum, as an urban
organization form, is a city-system too.
The practice of building cities or units of cities, either commercial or residential, that
have been “standardized and cost-optimized as building industry products” is called city
modeling (Brugmann, 2009, p. 108). A name reminiscent of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Model Cities
Program (a Great Society initiative coordinated by the Department of Housing and Urban
Development), the impetus for city-modeling is primarily economic with developers, urban
planners, and business and community leaders looking to re-create an urban model believed to
generate a profit. The aggregate effect of combining multiple interests to the development of an
area is a desired level of financial and planning expertise. However, not soliciting the input of the
end users limits the understanding of the true economic and political impact of the development.
Examples of city models are abundant and they do not have to be confined strictly to the
suburban environment. Skyscrapers are a good example of a city model: they are quintessential
“business industry products”, they are build for the end users and not with them, developers
embrace them as they think of the potential profits, urban planners see them as a solution to the

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high density problems of the urban area and community leaders believe their construction would
enhance the global image of the city.
The master-planned city is Brugmann’s (2009) fourth and final city-building approach.
As a large scale, special purpose project, the master planned city is largely the implementation of
a planner or an architect’s vision and enjoys governmental support. As in previous cases, the
success of this type of development project relies on the alignment of the builder’s vision with
the needs and wants of the users. One of the biggest master-planned developments that come to
mind is Baron Georges Haussmann’s redesign of Paris. Commissioned by Napoleon III, the plan
allowed Haussmann to implement an idealistic vision for the city that was first seen as sterile by
the city’s residents. Eventually, however, the large boulevards and the standard architectural look
were adapted to the Parisian way of life and the cultural shift it initially caused soon became
imperceptible (Carmona, 2002).
The importance of cities magnifies the relevance of urban development strategies and
their impact on the current global socio-economic system. Aware of the fact that urban
population will grow by three billion people in the next twenty-five years, Brugmann (2009)
proposes the practice of New Urbanism as a counteracting force to that future pressure (p.110).
With lessons taken from Dharavi’s effective city-system, New Urbanism advances the argument
that the clogged and overpopulated urban centers of the future will be able to achieve stability
and economic growth only if they are user-friendly cities, created by the people, for the people.
In the attempt to envision the future pressures exerted on the global system by the
internal structure of urban centers, this paper will describe and analyze the two most
predominant city-building models: 1) the global city model and 2) the city-system model as
outlined by the development of the urban slums.

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II. A. The global city model
As Neil Brenner and Roger Keil (2006) suggest, “all major maps of the global urban
system must be understood as representations of power, centrality and exclusion in the
contemporary global economy” (p. 189). And that is exactly why using the elite theory model to
explain the impact of global actors on the urban landscape makes the most sense. Tracking the
movement of corporate actors across national boundaries, Grant and Nijman (2002) acknowledge
the distinct impact global firms have on the spatial fabric of cities by distinguishing several
distinct patterns: 1) the business districts of foreign companies specializing in financial and
producer services carve out the most valuable urban land and represent the pulse of the city’s
role in the global economy; 2) domestically controlled companies settle in and around the foreign
business districts; 3) the rest of the city space is reserved for the lower-end local markets of the
economically deprived classes.
The elite theory model, instead of explaining political and socio-economic decisions
through the use of logic, understands the policy-making process in terms of the influence exerted
on it by prominent members of a society. Expressed differently, the elite model states that
policymakers actually serve the interests of the wealthy and connected social strata – the elite.
Among the most widely known and cited elite theorists are Robert Michels (The iron law
of oligarchy), Floyd Hunter (Community power structure); Charles Wright Mills (The power
elite) and Robert Dahl (Who governs?). While the premise of all these works is the ability of
private actors with private interests to influence policy-making outcomes towards the detriment
of the public at large, the methods used to arrive at the conclusions differ from author to author.
For example, in his book Community power structure, Floyd Hunter (1953) looks at the
“power connections” of an American “Regional City” (the actual name of the city is not

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provided) and concludes that the men of power identified can be divided into four groups:
“business, government, civic associations, and ‘society’ activities” (p. 11). Out of these four
groups, the business elite emerged as the most influential in the 1950s policy-making sphere,
being able to push its agenda undisturbed by the public will and unconcerned about the larger
social issues characterizing the Regional City environment (expressly the concerns of the
African-American people). Robert Dahl (1961) does not share Hunter’s analysis of a
community’s power relationships as his observations lead him to believe that power does not
reside with only one group but is actually dispersed among different socio-economic
communities (Eldridge, 1983, p. 86).
The work of Charles Wright Mills, who by 1962 was “reputed to be the most widely read
sociologist in the world” proposed a different analytic framework to the study of power
structures in society (Eldridge, 1983, p. 13). Among his large body of work, one of Mills’ most
famous additions to the elite scholarly work was entitled The power elite. According to John T.
Eldridge (1983), Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow, The power elite was the
result of the emergence in America of
“[…] a new corporatism: directed by military, industrial and political elites; unopposed
by the trade unions following a policy of maximum adaptation to the new corporate
order, overcoming the interests of the ‘old’ middle classes; and untroubled by the ‘new’
middle class, which is full of status anxieties and empty of class consciousness. This new
corporatism points in the direction of war economy by way of handling the slump-boom
cycle.” (p. 81)
This little passage suggests the overarching preoccupation of Mills with the possibility that, in
times of social unrest, the ability of certain groups to push their interests on the decision-makers’
agenda can take the entire American society in an anti-democratic and dangerous direction
(Eldridge, 1983). This insight can be extrapolated and applied to many other environments,
especially the extremely complex and socially vulnerable environment of cities.

Urban models 21
Before applying Mills’s elite theory to understanding the global city urban development
model, since it is the most pertinent elite theoretical framework to the corporate environment,
one last conceptual issue needs to be clarified. The group that he defines as the power elite does
not only come from the economic sphere, as is the case in Floyd Hunter and Robert Dahl’s
works. Charles Wright Mills displays a more expansive understanding of power and suggests
that power elites usually emerge within the institutional trends of “political, economic and
military orders and the growing coincidence of their objective interests” (Eldridge, 1983, p. 83).
To put that in more layman terms, the people at the top usually acquire power by changing roles
from one institutional setting to another. A good example of that would be the amazing job
mobility displayed by public officials and corporate top employees. Their high level of expertise
and personal connections in their career field makes it extremely easy for them to secure center
positions at the top of both public and private institutions. The strength of the “iron triangle”
links increases their chances to become key decision-makers in both professional arenas.
By applying Charles Wright Mills’s broad understanding of the power elite to the
perpetuation of the global city urban model, three overarching elements come to life: 1) the
urban model is driven by what Barber (1995) calls the image of the McWorld ; 2) the correlation
between the global city image and the promise of economic prosperity is a product of the
political and economic elites and leads to the predominance of the global city model over any
other type of city-building approaches 3) the application of the model in extremely diverse and
socio-economically polarized environments only leads to the perpetuation of those rifts and the
impending appearance of Cities of Crisis (Brugmann, 2009).
In the 1980s, the transformations set in motion by advances in telecommunications and
political unrest did not go unnoticed by scholars. The convergence of several factors, such as the

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availability of new information technologies, strategically-placed fiber-optic infrastructure and
the liberalization of formerly closed markets, led to unprecedented levels of international trade.
Thomas Friedman (2007) interpreted this new phase of globalization to mean that the economic
playing field has been leveled to such an extent that geographical location has lost its
competitive advantage. To him, the increased mobility of the workspace meant that cities,
previously the commercial nodes of the global marketplace, had lost their “prime mover”
economic status.
There is a long list of scholars disputing Friedman’s arguments. One of them, renowned
economist Joseph Stiglitz (2006), argued that while trade volumes have increased far beyond
previous levels, most financial transactions still occur between a very small number of financial
centers. And even though new players have entered the marketplace and are now more integrated
in the global system than they ever were, there is no reason to assume that their new status has
put them on an equal footing with the leading economic capitals of the world. In some cases,
Stiglitz (2006) points out, the world seems less flat now than before as exposure to global
markets forces has left some countries worse off.
Urban scholar Saskia Sassen (1994) joins Stiglitz in rebuking Friedman’s concept of
flatness by pointing out to the explosion of business activity in the great international business
centers of the world – New York, London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Hong Kong – once they got
exposed to the 1980s telecommunications boom:
The explosion in the numbers of firms locating in the downtowns of major cities during
that decade goes against what should have been expected according to models
emphasizing territorial dispersal; this is especially true given the high cost of locating in a
major downtown area. (p. 2)

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This particular realization, strengthened by the lack of studies on how global processes have
changed the function of urban centers, compels Sassen (1994) to include cities in her analysis of
globalization.
Her findings suggest that the shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a service,
finance-centered global market has actually heightened the importance of cities as
1) command points in the organization of the world economy; 2) key locations and
marketplaces for the leading industries of the current period, which are finance and
specialized services for firms; and 3) major sites of production for these industries,
including the production of innovations. (Sassen, 1994, p. 4)
This new strategic predominance is not, however, reserved for all urban locations; it is the
distinctive characteristic of what Sassen (1994) calls the “global cities.”
Despite being the one to coin the term “global cities,” Saskia Sassen is not the first
academic to observe the features that made them the central players of the new globalization
phase. Robert B. Cohen (1981), John Friedman (1982) and Goetz Wolff (1982) were
instrumental in defining the political economy of urban systems by tracing the spatial movement
of multinational corporations and analyzing the effects of those movements on the cities’ internal
structures. In doing so, they uncovered the key characteristics of global cities and why they
became the command centers of the new information economy: 1) the 1980s economic shift
witnessed transnational corporations, service firms and banks become the main players
responsible for the global creation of wealth; 2) these players located their activities in the heart
of the world’s cities (Cohen, 1981; Sassen 1994).
The urban centrality of corporate activity, even though the advance in
telecommunications would facilitate the creation of workspaces in other strategic locations, has
led urban scholars to discern certain connections between global cities that are not shared with
other economic entities. Sassen (1994) explains, “as certain cities have prospered, they have

Urban models 24
come to have more in common with one another than with regional centers in their own nation-
states, many of which have declined in importance” (p. xiv). This particular trend, seen in part as
the result of the “erosion of the role of the government in the national economy” was believed to
signal the birth of a transnational urban system (Sassen, 1994, p. 19; Marcuse, 1999; Cohen,
1981).
Indeed, as service firms, banks and multinational corporations seek to take advantage of
new markets, the business connections they establish between their home and host cities are
more than financial in nature; those connections have a distinctive physical representation as
well. In the study “The neglected builder of global cities,” Anne Haila (1997) recognizes the
spatial dimension of global transactions by saying that “’the same worldly superstars [that
dominate the urban landscape of New York or Tokyo], developers, architects and private-sector
financial institutions [like Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Cesar Pelli or Citibank], design the
landscape in all global cities” (p. 285). A by-product of money following money, the visual
similarity of global cities is indicative of nothing short of an urban development model: the
global city model.
Using the city-building framework of urban scholar Jeb Brugmann (2009), it is easy to
see that the global city model is a product of the city-modeling approach to urban development.
As previously mentioned, the drivers behind city modeling are economic in nature with urban
planners, community and business leaders and developers looking to maximize the value and the
efficiency of the urban environment. Increasing the efficiency of human interaction is a core goal
of the urban planning process and certainly one that all the experts involved in the development
of city-models strongly adhere to. The global city model’s own selling feature is the promise of a
wealthier and more organized tomorrow. Its promise, much like its image, is extremely enticing

Urban models 25
for the image-makers of the world. Whether it delivers on it or not in the highly complex urban
environment is the main question driving this research. And to produce an answer, describing
what the global city model entails would be the place to start.
The global city model, as the name itself suggests, is the physical expression of the
liberalization of markets, telecommunications advances, and increased levels of international
trade that originated in the capitalist West (Sassen, 1994). The main driving force behind it is
money. Its creators are the corporate players of the global economy. Its style is modern. Its
iconic structure is the megaproject, embodied by high-rise buildings, shopping malls and what
Uta Lehrer (2003) calls “the trophy building” (p. 334).
Like with most other urban development models, the architecture of the global city model
is a reflection of its conceptual origins. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon foundation of the
international economic system has translated into a global city architecture dominated by the
most recognizable visual symbol of the Western world: the modern high-rise. Easily
distinguishable from any of its architectural predecessors, with its steel framework and glass
façade, the modern high-rise represents the ideal expression of grandeur, power and secular
capitalism valued by the corporate heroes of the 20th
and 21st
centuries. Thus, driven by the
economic interests of the multinational companies, the “form follows function” motto of the
post-modern architectural movement became not only the theoretical idea behind the
construction of every high-rise, but it also underlined the desired spatial arrangement of the
modern, capitalist city.
The link between the global city model and the world’s top economic players is
extremely significant to understanding its social, cultural and economic ramifications. In the
current intellectual arena the value of a city’s capital markets is the primary dimension deciding

Urban models 26
its global status. The other elements considered, based on the Global cities index created by the
Foreign Policy magazine in collaboration with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the
firm A.T. Kearney, are the human capital, diversity and political influence concentrated within a
city. All combined, these characteristics are believed to exemplify the ability of an urban center
to use the complexities of its environment to provide “the vast opportunities of global integration
to its people” (Foreign Policy, 2008, p. 1). However, in order to attract the companies,
international organizations, embassies and the diverse population needed to become the global
engines of growth that global cities are considered to be, city managers need to build the
infrastructure necessary for all those actors to operate effectively. And since the high-rise is, and
has been since its inception, the symbol of modernity and economic power, cities all over the
world are rushing to increase their global capital by building, or just adding to, their own
network of skyscrapers.
The conceptual association between the construction of high-rises and the “power,
sophistication, wealth and influence” of globally integrated cities dates back to the early 1900s
(Foreign Policy, 2008, p. 1). At that time, the economic growth of American cities, Chicago and
New York in particular, translated into a competition over who could build the highest tower. So,
as the wealth increased, so did the height of their buildings (Thornton, 2005).
The preference for building high was at first rationalized based on the pressing need to
increase the amount of urban living space. The Industrial Revolution had concentrated the
majority of the manufacturing jobs in the cities, which soon became overcrowded with the large
number of people searching for jobs and improved living standards. Desirous to solve the
sanitation and social equality issues that seemed to plague cities in the late 19th
century and the
beginning of the 20th
century, architects such as Frederick Law Olmstead, David Burnham and

Urban models 27
Le Corbusier incorporated into their urban projects two main concepts: green space and tall
buildings. Daniel Burnham was among the first architects to design one of the first American
skyscrapers, the Masonic Temple in Chicago. While torn down in 1939, at the time of its
completion the Masonic Temple was over 21 stories high and became the tallest building in
America (Hines, 1979).
The increasing availability of steel made the task of building high-rises significantly
easier. Not having to rely exclusively on concrete for the construction process allowed for the
skyscraper structure to be much slender and lighter. And since its sleek and reflective surface
satisfied the visual and technical requirements of both modernists and capitalists, the skyscraper
became the perfect embodiment of function and form desired by both movements.
Le Corbusier, one of the most well-known modern architects, was instrumental in laying
out the ideal format of the capitalist city whose visual and structural centerpiece was the high-
rise. Among the best examples of Le Corbusier’s urban design principles, and a perfect
demonstration of how those principles translated into the predominant layout of the global city
model, is the Ville Contemporaine (Contemporary City) project. Designed in 1922 to house
approximately three million urban inhabitants, the focal point of the Contemporary City was the
sixty-story residential and office high-rises arranged in a cruciform pattern. The buildings,
placed within large, rectangular green areas, were in close proximity to the multi-modal
transportation system made up of highways, public transit lines and airport runways. The
automobile was the central mode of transportation, being intentionally separated from pedestrian
walkways. Smaller housing units surrounded the sixty-story high-rises and created the visual
effect of an urban pyramid. Although Le Corbusier’s idealistic urban model was never
completed, its influence on Western urban development patterns – and what eventually became

Urban models 28
the global city urban development model – was multifaceted: 1) architecturally-expressed socio-
economic divisions with the urban center reserved for the urban elite; 2) vertical urban design
regarded as more sustainable than horizontal spatial arrangements; 3) artistic originality and
iconic stature of buildings could be best achieved by building high (Passanti, 1987; Passanti,
1997).
With capitalism and modernism proving to form the essence of the global city model, the
economic divisions expressed in Le Corbusier’s urban designs became, over time, one of its most
important characteristics (Marcuse, 1999, p. 368). Among the intellectuals observing this trend
was Peter Marcuse. In the article entitled “Space in the globalizing city,” Marcuse (1999)
observed that any city that became integrated in the world economy would eventually display
several distinct socio-economic areas: 1) “the city of controlling decisions” where the most
powerful individuals in the society work and live; 2) “the city of advanced services” where the
information economy offices are located ; 3) “the city of direct production” focused on
manufacturing and producer services; 4) “the city of unskilled work and the informal economy”
where the low end service jobs are performed 5) and “the residual city” housing the life and
labor of the indigent and disenfranchised populations (p. 363).
While these regions can sometimes overlap, as the production of advanced services relies
heavily on the low end labor market (luxury hotels need waiters, doormen, cleaning personnel),
visually these patterns are easily distinguishable for any city dweller. It is hard to mistake the
reflective surfaces of the downtown high-rises with the busting, crowded neighborhoods of the
middle and lower classes. What this suggests is that the global city model, most easily
recognized due to the commercial symbolism of the skyscrapers, is a product and a “producer” of
the “city of controlling decisions” and the “city of advanced services” (Marcuse, 1999).

Urban models 29
That insight was not missed on the foreign elites. The long period of American political
and economic world domination during the 20th
century, also referred to as the Pax Americana,
was for outsiders inextricably linked to the performance of its top cities. Images of steel and
glass skyscrapers became immediately associated with wealth. And while few began to wonder
whether it was the wealth that led to the buildings or the buildings that in fact attracted the
wealth, the reality was that countries and cities felt compelled to build high in order to compete
in the new global economy.
New York, London and Paris were the trend-setters of the global city dream. Hubs of
both financial and producer services, they became the go-to-cities for companies looking to
expand into new markets and for the new, educated, global individuals. Tokyo, Hong Kong and
Singapore were soon added to the list of globally integrated cities, demonstrating the ability of
non-Western nations to successfully adapt to the new economic environment and to reap the
benefits associated with it.
The continued pressure exerted by international organizations and the trillion dollars of
daily trading of financial assets created an environment of economic necessity for local and
national governments that had not made the transition to the capitalist system. And to attract the
corporate actors and the creative labor force vital to their economic growth, the urban elites only
had to replicate an already successful development pattern: use the built environment to create
the spectacular, wealth-inspired “fantasies of global city status” (Lehrer, 2003, p. 333).
The Dubai emirate, under the vision of its ruling Al-Maktoum dynasty, embraced the new
global economy with the goal of becoming one of its leading centers. Intent on transitioning from
an oil-based economy to a producer of financial and advanced services, the Dubai elite
deliberately used the aesthetics and amenities of modern architecture towards bringing the image

Urban models 30
of the global city to life. Based on a Western-inspired concept of “if you build it, they will
come,” Dubai became in the first years of the 21st
century the breeding ground for the most
innovative and iconic architectural structures of the world, such as the Palm Island, the Burj
Khalifa (initially called Burj Dubai) and the Burj-al Arab Hotel (Robinson, 1989). Seeking
economic development by completely redefining its urban development patterns, Dubai became
the most classical representation of a country intent on copying the global city model.
Dubai’s implementation of the global city model is fueled by the association between the
iconic status of the urban architecture and the new prosperity that its inhabitants, multinational
corporations, tourists and an educated workforce, are expected to create. The copying activity is
a by-product of the availability of oil money. It is not a grass-roots city formation process. It is a
top-down, idealistic, card-board practice of urbanism. It is centered within a framework of global
competition, where power and economic status is symbolized by the highest and most
technologically-innovative building. The goal of all these efforts is the “global city” title,
measured by the number of corporate headquarters, size of international airports, number of
international flights, the presence of big universities, the inflow of foreign tourists. And since
Dubai’s sole mission since the Millennium has been to improve those particular assets, it
exemplifies many of the sustainability issues associated with the global city model: the
increasing gap between the rich and the poor, master-planned urban development practices, the
decreasing concern for cultural values, market instability caused by real estate speculation and
overinvestment, increased environmental pressures, fiscal burdens.
To demonstrate the consequences of the unchecked application of the global city model,
looking at the example provided by Dubai does not suffice. Bringing Chicago into the analysis,
one of the world’s most famous metropolitan areas that regularly tops the list of global cities,

Urban models 31
provides a fresh perspective on the challenges of becoming a global urban center. Hailed by most
scholars for successfully transitioning from a manufacturing-based to a service, tourism-oriented
economy, Chicago became in the words of Jeb Brugmann (2009) a “Great Opportunities City:” a
city that has in place the concentration of money and power needed to implement a holistic
approach to urban planning but that lacks the “strategic capability to face the final phase and to
shape it” (p. 157). Its transformation has everything to do with the global city urban development
model laid out by the global powerhouses (New York, London, Tokyo), which prescribes that
the creation of an economy based on higher education, communications, and business services
needs to be preceded by the building of the amenities needed to attract the “rich and the brainy”
– high-rises, shopping centers, parks, hotels, good restaurants, museums, big entertainment
venues (Brugmann, 2009, p. 147). Throughout the process, however, Chicago has not been able
to steer away from the array of socio-economic problems that scholars have associated with the
global city model, in particular the widening of the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Therefore, the inability to hide and remedy its highly contested space makes Chicago a perfect
example of the different pitfalls the global model entails for the urban centers intent on copying
it.
II. B. The city-system model: The slums
The global city model does not create solely magnificent structures and efficient living
environments, as its proponents would like to point out. The “market imperative” that drives its
creation and allows for the continued growth and prosperity of its economic and political elites,
is the same principle that transforms the urban environment into a socio-economically divided,
contested space (Barber, 1995; Sassen, 1994; Perlman, 2005). For the more the “city of control
decisions” puts offices and houses in the most valuable land of a metro area, by bodies of water

Urban models 32
as is the case with Dubai and Chicago, the people who cannot afford the steep prices those
residences entail are pushed towards the urban outskirts. So as cities try to enhance their role as
“global command and control centers” and the growth of corporate infrastructure dominates all
urban design and land use discourse, gentrification6
becomes a dominant phenomenon of the
global city model (Sassen, 1994).
The world’s top global cities, New York, London, Paris, have long illustrated that pattern
of socio-economic displacement of the poor by the prosperous. Chicago itself has gained world
class status by being able to transform previously distressed neighborhoods into upscale, affluent
areas. Its own Lincoln Park, Lakeview and Old Town residential districts, to only name a few,
have been a by-product of that phenomenon (Brugmann, 2009; Longworth, 2008). While the
process of upgrading large areas of urban land has been seen as a natural progression of
economic development forces, urban scholars have primarily associated that trend with the
ability of the political and economic elites to shape the use of the urban land (Brugmann, 2009;
Magnusson, 1996; Lehrer, 2003; Sassen, 1994).
One of those scholars is Jeb Brugmann. For him, the hurry to conform to the
requirements of the information economy has created an urban design environment dominated
“by expedient deal makers and shifting external pressures” (Brugmann, 2009, p. 157). Under
these circumstances master-planned projects and ad-hoc developments have taken precedence
over any other from of urban development models and, even worse, over the enforcement of a
cohesive and equitable urban design. The poor and the underprivileged, whose dreams of land
ownership are dependent on the promises and mercy of the policy-makers, have witnessed their
goal of integration and social mobility rapidly dissipating in the capitalist society:
6
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines gentrification as the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the
influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents.

Urban models 33
Whole cities and whole regions […] are being re-formed to make them comfortable
spaces for the public life of the prosperous. Beside, beneath, and often co-present with
these spaces are other, more constricted spaces that provide for the less prosperous.
Homeless people live in every crack and cranny, having been swept from the places of
privilege with ruthless efficiency. (Magnusson, 1996, p. 258)
Their homes become the unclaimed (left-over) spaces of the modern cities. Their socio-economic
organizing principle becomes necessity. Their land use model becomes the maximization of
space and density, or what Brugmann (2009) calls, the city-system.
Among the most well known habitats housing the urban poor is the slum. Also referred to
as a shanty town, the slum has always been regarded as the soar-spot of an urban environment,
the place of residence of the disenfranchised and unwanted members of the society and the main
source of criminal behavior (Perlman, 2005; Davis, 2006; Brugmann, 2009).
A bird’s eye view of the slums (as seen below) visually expresses the reason for the long
term stigma associated with their existence: unstable and improvised constructions piled one on
top of the other, narrow roadways, limited to nonexistent vegetation to absorb the pollution
fumes emitted by the never-ending activity, public and common “bathrooms,” and too many
people for life to ever feel relaxing (Jacobson, 2007). To the individual used to the modern
amenities, the lack of water, electricity and proper sanitation associated with the slums make
them the worst possible environment to live in.
In fact, because slums have been considered “breeding grounds” for illicit behavior,
governments have usually opted to brutally erase them off the map instead of finding ways to
integrate them into the local economy. The first known case of slum eradication occurred during
the 19th
century redesign of Paris. The grand strategist behind that act was the Baron Georges
Haussmann. Haussmann’s annexation and removal of the poor districts was part of his vision of
transforming the French capital into a visually and structurally-unified urban center (Sutcliffe,
1993, p. 84; Carmona, 2002). Thus, for the City of Lights to be born, the unregulated interaction

Urban models 34
between the urban poor had to be either masked or completely removed from the visible metro
area.
Source: BBC
To government officials, city managers, real-estate developers, businessmen and middle-
to-high-income residents that aspire to have their cities reach the global status, the removal of the
slums from the metro area and their replacement with modern architectural structures can have
nothing but positive consequences. The general approval of the upper social-economic strata
represents a mandate for policy-makers like India’s state chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh and
Western-educated architects like Mukesh Mehta, to change the patterns of development of their
troubled cities. And since Mumbai has the largest concentration of poor people in its centrally-
located Dharavi slum, the narrative of India’s urban revolution begins in Mumbai.
Dharavi, like most other slums, traces its roots to the efforts of rural migrants to find
work by settling closer to the urban market environment. Not being able to afford the steep rental
prices of the legal city, the migrants claimed the remaining land to build their residences and
industrial activities. With land prices remaining cheap in the absence of the dwellers’ legal rights

Urban models 35
over it and space being extremely limited, Dharavi witnessed the creation of a unique type of
urban structure: the residential-industrial building. As Jeb Brugmann (2009) suggests, the mixed-
use nature of the slum’s improvised living and working quarters became, over time, the key to its
“density-related competitive advantage[s]”: low transportation costs, “extremely high utilization
rate of property,” and close proximity of suppliers and retailers (p. 98). Eventually, those benefits
allowed Dharavi to increase to an estimated density of “187,000 to 300,000 people per square
kilometer,” all of whom came to Mumbai’s largest slum with hopes of accumulating wealth and
moving up the social ladder (Brugmann, 2009, p. 98).
The “Slum-Free Dharavi” master plan envisioned by the Long Island mansion builder
Mukesh Mehta does not, in the words of his creator, seek to threaten the positive economic
features of the slum. What is attempted in fact is to replace the “subhuman conditions” of the
slum dwellers for the “economic upliftment and empowerment” that would result from bringing
Dharavi up to global city standards (Brugmann, 2009, p. 133).
Transforming Dharavi into a world class suburb, where every slum family would receive
a 225-square feet, two-bedroom apartment in a high-rise, feels anathema to those who believe the
slum’s economic environment s is already world class (Jacobson, 2007, p. 3). Like most global
economies, it is home to “retail shops, warehousing, goods transport, lawyers, accountants,
expediters, hotel and entertainment businesses, health clinics, religious institutions, and local
political organizations” (Brugmann, 2009, p. 95). As a place where nothing goes to waste,
Dharavi has a thriving export-oriented industry and an estimated annual GDP of $1.5 billion
(Brugmann, 2009; Jacobson, 2007; Konerman, 2010). It is an environment unfettered by
regulation, untaxed, and with little or no governmental assistance. It is, by all accounts, a little bit
more than an urban blemish; it is a thriving economic ecosystem.

Urban models 36
Although aware of Dharavi’s amazing diversity and economic autonomy, the forces of
change driven by India’s political and economic elites continue to push onward. Their decision
to completely transform the slum according to accepted global city standards instead of
integrating it in the already well-functioning economic climate demonstrate the struggle taking
place in every urban environment between the international business, top-down city-building
approach and the bottom-up, city-user perspective.
This struggle over the reconstruction of Dharavi is nothing new for elite and global city
theorists who interpret all events by looking at the dynamics of power at play. The former group
sees the policy making environment as the playground of the rich and powerful, to which the
millions of destitute and disenfranchised slum dwellers have no access (Barber, 1995; Mills,
1971). The latter understands the transformation of the urban environment in terms of the
economic elite’s desire to reap the benefits of integration into the world economy. Both of these
perspectives are proven to be true. According to Brugmann (2009), the favorable location of the
slum has given rise to a “perverse market for profitability within the [Indian] government
[expressed through] the corrupt bidding for tenure and development rights, building contracts
and ownership from the powerful bureaucracy” (p. 136). Mumbai’s powerful builder
associations contribute to the pressure to turnover the slum. And, as predicted by the elite
theorists, the resistance of the dwellers to the transformation about to take place does not seem to
matter much. The sixty percent consent that would be required for a project of this scale was
eliminated when state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh declared Mehta’s plan a government-
sponsored project (Jacobson, 2007, p.3; Konerman, 2010).
Dharavi is not the only example that can shed light on the struggle between the slum
dwellers and the global economic mindset. Brazil, through its Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo

Urban models 37
favelas, “Brazilian term for squatter settlements, shantytowns, or irregular settlements,” has also
displayed the large conflict between the marginalized poor and the social elite (Perlman, 2005, p.
1). According to Janice Perlman (2005), much of that marginalization has resulted from the
stigma associated with the improvised and unsanitary living conditions the poor have created for
themselves. However, continuing to portray Rio de Janeiro’s approximately 1.65 million favela
inhabitants as the “blight of society” skews the policy-making environment in favor of the
middle and upper classes and further perpetuates the socio-economic disparity that leads to the
creation of the slums (Perlman, 2005, p.3).
When looking at the government sponsored-projects devised to improve the living
standards of the urban slum residents, one can’t help but notice their misguided rationale and
often elitist nature. To begin with, labeling the slums as “subhuman” neighborhoods” completely
denies the grass-roots socio-economic progress taking place there: 1) nearly every household in
Dharavi and the Rio de Janeiro favelas now has access to water and electricity as well as modern
amenities such as television sets; 2) not all the homes are structurally improvised and made out
of stucco; many are made out of “brick and mortar and two stories high or more”; 3) there are
well-established internal markets for both real-estate and entertainment services, which replicate
the “legal” environment but at a fraction of the cost (Perlman, 2005; Jacobson, 2007; Brugmann,
2009).
By most accounts though, the architects and developers redesigning the future of the
slums believe that their Western-inspired city models will only enhance the living standards of
the current residents without harming their well-established ways of production and social
interaction. That is very unlikely. Given Mukesh Mehta’s focus on the creation of a thriving
consumerist society by moving Dharavi residents into apartment towers surrounded by plazas

Urban models 38
and shopping malls, it is hard to imagine how people making enough to barely survive in the big
city would be able to afford the inflated prices of modern markets (Brugmann, 2009). Moreover,
removing polluting manufacturing industries away from the residential areas would strike at the
most important comparative advantages Dharavi has to offer: constant land use and proximity to
resources.
Mehta’s inability to map out the overall effects of his plans has led to a serious debate
regarding the future sustainability of Mumbai. Those opposing the Dharavi redevelopment
project cite the ineffectiveness of similar decisions in places like Rio de Janeiro. According to
Janice Perlman’s (2005) study for the World Bank, the eradication of the favelas in the 1970s
and their replacement with high rises only worsened the livelihood of the poor (p. 6). Mike Davis
(2006) strengthens that view by pointing out to comparable policies in China and Thailand where
the governments’ decision to build houses for the poor too far away from their jobs further
exacerbated those countries’ social inequalities.
By the 1990s and early 2000s Brazilian authorities acknowledged the counter-
productiveness of their early policies and replaced them with socially-inclusive ones. Thus,
instead of resorting to relocating and evicting the slum residents, the Rio de Janeiro government
opted to grant residents legal land titles in the hope of transforming the favelas into “more stable,
lawful, sanitary, mixed-use neighborhoods” (Brugmann, 2009, p. 138). Perlman’s (2005)
decision to return to the favelas decades after her initial study was published allowed her to
witness first-hand the positive impact those later policies had on the overall status of the poor.
Among the most powerful conclusions she came away with was that “contrary to prevailing
wisdom, living in a favela [was] no longer synonymous with living in poverty” (Perlman, 2005,
p. 7). And if the Indian authorities and Mukesh Mehta relinquished their desire to copy the global

Urban models 39
city model step by step, they would also see that Dharavi, much like Rio’s favelas, was a little bit
more than a collection of poor and destitute individuals.
British scholar Thomas Malthus looked upon the messiness of the industrial urban
environment and predicted that the continued growth of the world population would rapidly
become unsustainable. As technology advanced, however, his prediction did not come true.
Currently, 3.5 million people live in the world’s cities. According to the United Nations
Development Program that number is expected to double by the year 2050 (Brugmann, 2009).
Most of that growth will occur in developing nations, where birth rates are significantly higher
than in the developed countries. With the poor expected to contribute the largest percent of
people to the urban environment, slums are projected to increase at a higher rate then the rest of
the city population (Davis, 2006). Scholars interpret those numbers to mean that the current
destruction of independently economic ecosystems like Dharavi in search of the global city
model will have significant consequences on the overall sustainability of the global economic
environment. Jacobson (2007) worded that insight best: “Indeed, on a planet where half of
humanity will soon live in cities, the forces at work in Dharavi serve as a window not only on the
future of India's burgeoning cities, but on urban space everywhere” (p.1). That is a conclusion
many Dharavi residents and supporters would like their government, and the world at large, to
see.
III. Economic sustainability of the two models: The lessons of the Great Recession
The Great Recession (2007-2010) has brought into sharp focus questions regarding the
sustainability of the current international economic system. Based on the capitalist principles of
free markets, flexible currencies and privatization, and driven by transnational corporations and

Urban models 40
banks, the newest financial crisis showed that the unchecked “invisible hand”7
moving economic
activity could lead to a complete meltdown.
While there are different schools of thoughts dominating the policy-making environment
of capitalist nations, among the most widely used theoretical framework belongs to British
economist John Maynard Keynes. Known for coining the phrase “In the long run we’re all dead”
Keynes suggested that economic downturns are caused by shifts in aggregate demand – “whether
from changes in spending by businesses on new capital, spending by consumers, government
spending, or spending on exports by foreigners” (Croushore, 2007, p. 297). Therefore, in order to
prevent, or recover from, the overall decline in business activity Keynesian economists stressed
the importance of governments’ use of short-term expansionary monetary policies, which relied
on the increase of monetary supply to lower interest rates and encourage new borrowing and
spending. If left unchanged for long periods of time, however, expansionary policies would
distort markets much in the same way any inflexible policy would.
The recent collapse of the American financial system, which has severely impacted the
stability of the international economy, is believed to have resulted from overinvestment,
speculation and expansionary monetary policies. Low interest rates and easy loan terms led to
unprecedented investments in the real estate market, especially by sub-prime consumers.
Financial institutions, encouraged by large inflows of foreign funds, held most of their assets
attached to sub-prime mortgages (Devine, 2010). Once interest rates increased and borrowers
found it increasingly harder to pay off their loans, the value of the securities tied to the real estate
market plummeted and financial giants like Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman
Brothers, AIG, Citigroup were either nationalized or received substantial government bailout
7
Term coined by Adam Smith in his ground-breaking book The wealth of nations to refer to the self-regulating
nature of economic markets.

Urban models 41
packages. The financial fall of Wall Street’s corporate heroes unveiled to the American citizens
and the entire world the structural fragility of the capitalist system.
As the apex of the real estate market the skyscraper (or the high-rise) is “the great
architectural contribution of modern capitalistic society and […] one of the yardsticks for
twentieth-century superheroes” (Thornton, 2005, p. 51). For some scholars, the connection
between the construction booms that give birth to the high rises and the economic downfalls that
occur after their erection is directly connected to the behavior of the corporate actors. In 1999, to
better explore the link between business cycles and skyscraper construction, Andrew Lawrence
created the skyscraper index (Thornton. 2005, p.51)
While assuming that financial speculative practices and overinvestment were among the
main indicators for the index, Andrew Lawrence did not explore these issues to great depth.
Mark Thornton (2005), however, starting from where Lawrence left off, was able to correlate the
completion of a record-breaking skyscraper to the immediately-following periods of economic
turmoil through the application of the so-called “Cantillon effects.” Named after economist
Richard Cantillon, the Cantillon effects describe how expansionary monetary policies,
specifically increasing the money supply and lowering the interest rate below the levels the
market forces would have naturally established, “raises the prices of long term capital goods”
(Thornton, 2006, p. 59). Cheaper borrowing rates incentivize investors to allocate resources short
term even for projects that have a longer life span, such as skyscrapers. Thornton (2005)
explains those patterns of behavior.
First, a period of “easy money” leads to a rapid expansion of the economy and a boom in
the stock market. In particular, the relatively easy availability of credit fuels a substantial
increase in capital expenditures. Capital expenditures flow in the direction of new
technologies which in turn creates new industries and transforms some existing industries
in terms of their structure and technology. This is when the world’s tallest buildings are
begun. (p. 58)

Urban models 42
The eventual self-adjustment of the market, whether caused by a rise in prices to the increased
demands for goods or the central bank’s inflation-prevention measures, can cause panic in the
financial markets. Under these conditions, owners of capital goods may be facing significant
losses and could even default on their loans.
While this paper is not interested in proving the accuracy of the skyscraper index, it can
attest, through several examples, to the positive correlation observed between the timeline of
skyscraper construction and the flux in business cycles. The current economic collapse of Dubai,
who announced its inability to pay off over $100 billion in foreign loans immediately after the
completion of the world’s highest building, the Burj Khalifa, is a perfect example of the pattern
of financial booms and busts that dominate investment markets.
The poster-child for luxury and capital investment, Dubai took advantage of the world-
wide credit expansion to build the perfect global city image: imposing, innovative structures –
like the Burj Khalifa and the Palm Jumeira – meant to attract the corporate actors and their
educated workforce. It got what it wanted. Lured by the image of a fast-growing economy,
foreigners invaded Dubai and began to consume its Western-inspired goods – luxury hotels,
malls, high-rise apartments. By the time the crisis hit, an estimated ninety percent of Dubai’s
population was foreign (Worth, 2009). Having build an economy overly reliant on tourism,
banking and real-estate, Dubai was unable to survive the 2008 credit market turmoil unharmed.
With more than $100 billion owned by state-owned development firms, Dubai declared its
inability to pay back its creditors. As an immediate consequence, the companies that had initially
attracted the foreign workforce started engaging in massive lay-offs. And while it is uncertain
how many people actually lost their jobs due to the Dubai government’s refusal to disclose any
data that might harm its reputation, foreign correspondents’ descriptions of Dubai looking like a

Urban models 43
“ghost town” or the thousands of cars abandoned at the Dubai airport by people who couldn’t
pay off their debt tell a powerful story (Worth, 2009; Davidson, 2008). Indeed, even what was
initially the ultimate symbol of Dubai’s independence from its sister emirates’ oil-based
economies, the Burj Dubai became the Burj Khalifa as a sign of appreciation to the Abu Dhabi
ruler who rescued the city-state from bankruptcy (Davidson, 2008).
Dubai, enticed by the wealth and power of global cities, embarked in the first years of the
21st
century upon the journey of transforming itself into one. Like many other cities competing in
the global economy Dubai made the correlation between the look of the global city –
predominantly expressed by tall, imposing buildings – and its economic benefits (inflow of
foreign capital, tourism, and the “creative class” needed to run the city). With the skyscraper
having become the “critical nexus of the administration of modern global capitalism and
commerce where decisions are made and transmitted throughout the capitalist system,” the
Dubai ruling dynasty could not apply the global city model without building its largest symbol
(Thornton, 2005). Thus, at a projected cost of $20 billion, fully decorated by Giorgio Armani and
hosting a mix of apartments, malls and hotels, the Burj Khalifa was designed to demonstrate
Dubai’s commitment to become one of the world’s leading cities (Davidson, 2008).
Global investors initially glorified Dubai for turning its urban environment into the
perfect “oasis” for the lavish lifestyle of corporate employees. However, once credit markets
tightened and Dubai announced its inability to pay-off its creditors, analysts began blaming
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum for using Dubai’s resources on megalomaniacal
projects.
Dubai’s fall exposed one of the main structural inefficiencies associated with the
implementation of the global city model, which is the desire to build an urban environment

Urban models 44
meant to support the industries of the newest era of globalization – services, banking and real-
estate. The main problem with a city’s overreliance on these new growth sectors has to do with
the “speculative activity” that has resulted from the “transformation of various types of financial
assets and debts into marketable instruments” (Sassen, 1994, p. 6). Sassen (1994) explains what
that process entails:
The 1980s saw the invention of numerous ways to securitize debts. An agent can bundle a
large number of mortgages and sell the bundle many times, even though the number of
houses involved stays the same. This option is basically not available in manufacturing.
The good is made and sold; once it enters the realm of circulation, it enters another set of
industries, or sector of the economy, and the profits from subsequent sales accrue to those
sectors. (p. 18)
Although technological progress is continually responsible for the polarization of economic
sectors along profit-making capabilities, Sassen (1994) points out that the securitization process
dominating the current information economy can cause “massive distortions in the operations of
various markets, from housing to labor” (p.6). The events leading up to the Great Recession
(highlighted at the beginning of this section) and the recent release of information that points to
Goldman Sachs’ invention of an index “which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual
and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price” illustrates the high level of
speculative activity existing in today’s capital markets (The Associated Press, 2010).
Another lesson to be learned from Dubai’s financial meltdown is that designing an urban
center for visitors and the foreign workforce, instead of trying to enhance the local economic
advantages is not as soundproof of a policy as originally believed. In a global economic climate
where each city has built its image with the specific purpose of attracting as much foreign
income as possible, Dubai has also sought to diversify its economy by strengthening its tourism
economic sector. However, unlike its competitors, Dubai has tried to sidestep the profit pitfalls
that characterize seasonal industries by designing projects that specifically cater to the upper

Urban models 45
global strata. With indoor skiing slopes, water parks, island properties and high-rise apartments,
Dubai became by 2009 the second most visited Arabic country outside of Egypt (Walid, 2009).
However, the economic downturn did not spare Dubai’s booming tourism industry. With
increased unemployment levels in most developed nations, corporate bankruptcies and overall
decreased leisure budgets, Dubai hotels witnessed an activity slowdown of 16.7% in the first
quarter of 2009 (Walid, 2009). As of May 2010, the Financial Times reported that Dubai
investment business registered a loss of $562 million in 2009 (Kerr, 2010).
Dubai, as demonstrated above, is a clear representation of one of the two discernible
patterns threatening the sustainability of the global city, namely the very vulnerable nature of an
economy overly-reliant on banking, real-estate, and tourism. The second pattern is its identity as
a “landscape of power” (Sassen, 1994). Chicago, while hailed for its amazing transformation
from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, displays the second characteristic very well.
Chicago’s worldwide reputation dates farther back than the global city literature. As one
of America’s largest Midwestern cities, Chicago became famous during the industrial era and, by
the start of the twentieth century, was able to claim the title of one of the world’s ten largest
cities (Brugmann, 2009, p. 251). While its residents believed in the ability of the city to outlast
any major financial shocks, the global economic shift from heavy manufacturing to service-
based production caught Chicago off guard and brought it to its knees. With industrial jobs
disappearing one by one, the city lost its former vitality and glitz and became by the mid-1970s
one of the many Midwestern centers to be considered part of the Rust Belt (Longworth, 2008, p.
144).
Today Chicago regularly tops the list of global cities. Boasting a thriving business
district, many tourist attractions, prestigious universities, good restaurants, museums and an

Urban models 46
energetic nightlife, the city has managed to put its manufacturing slump behind and impress even
those who did not believe in its revival (Longworth, 2008, p.144). In order to build the high-
value industries worthy of a global city status, Chicago’s mayor Richard M. Daley spent most of
the city’ s finances on creating the amenities that would draw in “the rich and the brainy” – like
the “gigantic undertaking of theaters, fountains, promenades, gardens [and] sculptures” known as
the Millennium Park (Longworth, 2008, p.146). Certainly, the efforts of the “Daley political
machine” worked: overall Chicagoans are doing well, living in nice houses, in safe
neighborhoods, performing high-value jobs (Longworth, 2008, p.150). However, as journalist
Richard Longworth (2008) illustrates, not everybody’s living standards have increased as a result
of the city’s economic evolution:
[…] many Chicagoans live worse than ever in the old ghettos or, worse, are being shoved
by gentrification out of the ghettos into destitute inner-ring suburbs: the old housing
projects, lying in the path of the Loop’s expansion, are knocked down and their
inhabitants scattered to the civic winds. (p. 150)
These people are the have-nots of Chicago and every other global city, the ones who perform the
low-end jobs created by the global corporate culture and the ones who lack the education and
skills needed to become significant members of the information economy.
Global city scholar Saskia Sassen (1994) has argued repeatedly that it is impossible to
discuss the socio-economic sustainability of the global city model without addressing the
“narrative of eviction” that this model creates at the urban level (p. 6). The power differential
between the individuals who are actively involved in the decision-making processes of the global
city and those who are not is primarily a product of the operational framework set-up to meet the
needs of corporate actors, as Sassen (1994) explains:
The information economy […] favors information outputs over the workers producing
those outputs, from specialists to secretaries; and favors the new transnational corporate
culture over the multiplicity of cultural environments, including reterritorialized
immigrant cultures within which many of the ‘other’ jobs of the global information

Urban models 47
economy take place. In brief, the dominant narrative concerns itself with the upper
circuits of capital, not the lower ones. (p.7)
Charles Wright Mills (1971), writing thirty years earlier, observed the same landscape of power
highlighted by Sassen (1994) and feared that the continuous push of political and economic elites
to divide the urban environment in a way that only suited their needs, with little concern for the
fate of those it displaced, would eventually create an environment ridden by social inequalities
and unrest. Benjamin Barber (1995) more than agreed with Mills. His book, entitled Jihad vs
McWorld: How globalism and tribalism are reshaping the world traced the transnational
influence of corporations and witnessed that their repeated application of profit-oriented policies
led to the creation of powerful economic rifts that endangered the very stability of the democratic
system the markets relied upon.
The policies seeking the removal of the slums, instead of their integration, demonstrate
where the economic struggle is taking place in the global city. In Mumbai, the land of the
Dharavi slum is believed to be prime real-estate for both developers and the growing middle
class. Former Long Island mansion developer Mukesh Mehta, upon his return to Mumbai, started
sharing the frustrations of the local government and business elites who believed the slums “were
choking the life out of the city, robbing it of its rightful place in the 21st century” (Jacobson,
2007, p 3). That “rightful place”, following the patterns of economic integration set in motion by
the corporate actors, was to become a model consumer society (Jacobson, 2007, p 3).
As global city and elite theorists had predicted, the policy-making environment of a
metropolis committed to the global city model would predominantly reflect the interests of the
business class. And Mumbai is no exception to that observation: the Dharavi dwellers have no
legal rights over the land they inhabit, the government’s sponsorship of the redevelopment plan
means that a majority’s approval is not required for it to be enforced, and the project is be

Urban models 48
implemented by local developers who, in exchange, will be granted the right to build for-profit
housing on the unoccupied, slum-free land (Brugmann, 2009; Jacobson, 2007).
Like most other master-planned projects, the redevelopment of Dharavi is justified in
terms of density alleviation and economic growth. Mehta expects the area’s redesign to lead to
the expansion of India’s middle class (Jacobson, 2007, p. 2). Having met Mukesh Mehta, Jeb
Brugmann (2009) does not dispute his good intentions, but he does point out Mehta’s inability to
predict the full extent of his project’s consequences. And transforming Dharavi’s economically
self-sufficient system into a dependent, shopping-based urban environment will have a
significant impact on the Indian urban landscape. Some of the problems that come to mind are:
1) how are people who can barely afford slum-type luxury supposed to function in the capitalist,
middle-class economic environment?; 2) with manufacturing sites removed to different areas of
the city, where will the poorly educated slum residents find employment?; 3) given the United
Nations’ population statistics, which predict a doubling of the urban population by the year 2050,
will Mumbai’s redesign increase its ability to accommodate the huge influx of people, most of
them coming from poor backgrounds?; 4) while Dharavi currently boasts a very positive balance
of trade, due to its constant resource recycling practices, how will living in high-rises affect the
slum dwellers’ production patterns?; 5) and ultimately, will disrupting an environment that has
well-established cultural, financial, social and healthcare systems eventually force the
government to supply some of those services (and can the government afford to take on that
responsibility)? (Brugmann, 2009; United Nations, 2010)
As the Dharavi case illustrates, the inability of top-down urban designers to fully
understand the multifaceted effects of their projects can lead to the appearance of inefficient and
increasingly polarized urban environments. The global city model in particular, with its “focus

Urban models 49
on volumes of production, sales turnover, and the pressing need to rapidly expand the
burgeoning landscape” rather than on the development of an equitable urban culture, can threaten
the precarious socio-economic balance that cities need to thrive (Brugmann, 2009, p.131).
IV. Socio-cultural sustainability: The effects of the megaproject
For any resident of the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, alleyways are a
convenient and indispensable urban asset that seems to accommodate the unpredictable nature of
human beings: pedestrians use them as shortcuts, especially during the cold winter months, they
provide a way for cars to move around when streets are closed or traffic is congested and can be
reliable u-turn and stationing spots, minimizing the need for double parking. They represent
everything urban design should be about: simplicity, catering to the end-users, and livability.
The sustainability of cities cannot, therefore, be confined to their economic dimension. Because
they are the places where human connections happen, where communities are formed and ideas
are born, the urban space needs to be evaluated in terms of its ability to encourage those key
functions.
Architecture is the instrument through which cities display the socio-cultural constructs
upon which they are founded. Conversely, the architectural choices differentiating one urban
center from another decide the type of human interaction the urban designers had in mind. The
shift from an industrial-based production process to an information economy brought about
significant changes in the architectural look of cities. Embracing the dictates of modern design
and the technological advances of the construction industry, Western urban elites passionately
adopted the glitzy and rich look of the megaproject, in particular the skyscrapers.
The fascination of the human mind with megaprojects dates as far back as antiquity.
Whether such structures still remain standing, like the Pyramids of Egypt, Stonehenge and the

Urban models 50
statues of Easter Island, or have their existence confirmed only in writing, like the Tower of
Babel, they all represent a blueprint of their times and values. The fascination they inspire has
not faded. Indeed, advances in engineering and construction materials have given way to a
myriad of megaprojects that, in an increasingly global world, are meant to promote the image
and reputation of their host town.
Throughout history, every civilization has celebrated its military, political or economic
dominance through the building of grand, iconic architectural monuments. The Colosseum, the
Dome of Florence, the Tower of London, the Versailles Palace, and the Schonbrun Palace are
only some of the edifices that bear such iconic stature. Products of indisputably different cultures
and times, all of them differ in appearance and feel. Today’s iconic structures, however, are not
quite so distinctive. Built out of steel and glass they are the pure representation of global
economic development forces and therefore less of a symbol of the individual cultural
environments they are part of. Benjamin Barber (1995) tracks down the global identity of these
structures, which he labels with the term “McWorld,” to the glitzy, media-and commercially-
driven American cities: “McWorld is a product of popular culture driven by expansionist
commerce. Its template is American, its form and style. Its goods are as much images as
material, an aesthetic as well as a product line. It is about culture as commodity, apparel as
ideology” (p.7). When considering the largest mega-structures today (portrayed below), and the
Burj Khalifa, it is impossible to refute Bradley’s point.

The sustainability of competing urban development models-The myth of the global city model

The sustainability of competing urban development models-The myth of the global city model

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