Browsing by Subject "Global city"
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Item Globalization, urban transformation and livability(2008-08) Kim, Mikyung, 1977-; Roberts, Bryan R., 1939-Economic globalization in the 1980s ad 1990s gave birth to a new type of city, called a 'global city', which is assumed to perform critical functions to facilitate the contemporary global economy and which share the same characteristics. Cities, however, have different histories, economies, polities and demographies and these different local conditions do no lend themselves to the construction of a general model a global city even though they have characteristics. First, I explore the historical path of urban development in Seoul since the 1960s. Seoul is very unique in that its economic growth was mainly planned and implemented by the authoritarian Korean national government while civil and political freedom of citizens to participate the decision making process were strongly suppressed. However, the forces of globalization from the 1980s significantly altered the economic and political context in which the Korean state had successful operated in the previous decades. The role of state in regulating and planning the market was significantly weakened as well as the national political system became democratized and decentralized from the 1980s. These changes caused by the forces of globalization have made significant impacts on the organization of urban development in Seoul. Secondly, thus, I examine the social and political impacts of the globalization on the lives of the inhabitants in Seoul and I found that Seoul’s becoming a global city is closely related to the growing gap in the condition of living between the poor and the rich in Seoul. It is mainly caused by the restructuring of the urban labor market toward producer service sector orientation away from manufacturing sector. The expansion of the producer service sector has produced new trends in Seoul’s urban labor market: professionalization of regularly employed people at the top and increasing informal and low-skilled laborers and/or illegal foreign workers at the bottom. Moreover, it is found that increasing social inequality has its spatial consequence: a growing residential segregation. In Seoul, the southeast sub-region has emerged as an exclusive residential area for high-income professionals with much better living conditions, including spacious houses, easier access to heath-care facilities, more green space and educational institutions. The most important cause of the spatial concentration of professionals in this region is the concentration of the producer service sector jobs there. Yet, high price for housing in this area reinforces the clustering of the rich in the area and shuns lower-income people from moving into the area. However, the role of the national government cannot be under-estimated because the government urban policies produced the new development of residential and commercial development in the area in the 1980s. However, it is argued an opportunity to mediate the degrading economic living conditions for citizens in a global city has been created by the same force of globalization, yet in a different social system: urban politics. With particular emphasis on political democratization and decentralization under the current global economic system, it became possible for citizens to be directly involved in the public-policy making process. In theory, this situation implies that citizens are now empowered to create public policies that would minimize the negative consequences of economic globalization on their daily lives. My case study on Cheonggye Stream Restoration Project shows the opportunities and challenges of new urban political context in Seoul. The analysis of the Cheonggye Restoration Project suggests that more room has been created in the course of policy planning and the policy-making process, caused mainly by global political change toward direct democracy. However, the project also suggests that these changes at an institutional level did not lead to changes at an operational level, failing to produce an outcome that really reflects the demands of the actors.Item Physical place matters in digital activism : investigating the roles of local and global social capital, community, and social networking sites in the occupy movement(2015-05) Baek, Kang Hui; Reese, Stephen D.; Johnson, Thomas; Coleman, Renita; Straubhaar, Joseph; Chen, WenhongThis case study of the Occupy movement examines how different geographic forms of individual-level resources—local and global social capital—and communitylevel resources varying by place of residence play a key role in political activism in the digital age. To overcome the limited approach based on blind faith, in which social networking sites are unreservedly treated as sole mobilizing agents, this dissertation includes the exploration of how local and global social capital influence the way the use of social networking sites affects participation in the Occupy movement. In doing so, this dissertation goes beyond the exclusive focus on the effects of social capital formed and shared through the strength of a personal tie (i.e., strong vs. weak ties) on political participation considered in much of the current literature. Moreover, acknowledging that on-the-ground activities taking place in physical communities continue to be essential determinants of political engagement, this dissertation is intended to determine whether the communities in which individuals reside produce unique or specialized resources or environments, and how they provide different opportunities for involvement in the movement. From an online survey and in-depth interviews with participants in the U.S., this dissertation found that local and global forms of social capital had distinct effects on participation in the Occupy movement. This suggests that local social capital induced local participation, while global social capital encouraged global participation. In this vein, the use of social networking sites contributed to both local and global participation indirectly, through its effects on local and global social capital, respectively. Indeed, communities with politically liberal environments and high poverty levels were found to be favorable places for mobilizing participation. Global cities, New York City in particular, served as an optimal political space for encouraging participation in the movement because they provided diverse human resources and substantial political infrastructure. This dissertation makes an important contribution to our knowledge of political activism in the digital era. It highlights the situation that social networking sites are not sole contributors leading to political participation, and therefore, that the geographic dimension of social capital and community should also be carefully considered when examining political participation.